A 66-year-old patient at Dry Harbor Nursing Home died of COVID-19 last week after the Queens institution vaccinated only permanent residents – a deceptive policy the state apparently knew in advance.
Vita Fontanetta, known as Tina, was admitted to the 360-bed facility on January 11 to recover from bone inflammation. When the nursing home handed out vaccines on Jan. 13, she was excluded, a family member told City Councilman Robert Holden.
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On January 18, the grandmother of two was sent back to the hospital due to anemia and he tested positive for COVID, he said.
She died on January 23 at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center.
“I feel the nursing home was responsible in a way,” Fontanetta’s daughter-in-law told Holden (D-Queens) after a cover story in The Post exposed the Dry Harbor selective vaccine fiasco.
“The state does not appear to be adequately monitoring nursing home facilities for Covid prevention or vaccine explosion,” Holden said Saturday.
A COVID-19 outbreak in Dry Harbor – at least 44 residents and 11 staff members have tested positive since Dec. 22 – shows flaws in the Cuomo administration’s oversight of safety and vaccination in New York nursing homes.
Holden joined the meeting of Ron Kim (D-Queens), who lost an uncle in a nursing home due to COVID-19, and asked for a broad, independent investigation.
The councilor’s 96-year-old mother, Anne Holden, a rehabilitation patient at Dry Harbor, was also excluded from a first vaccination round that gave the nursing home permanent residents through a federal program administered on Dec. 23 by CVS.
Anne received a first dose three weeks later on January 13, when other residents received a second dose. She came down with COVID on January 20 and was admitted to the hospital. She remains in a stable condition.
Other patients and families suffer from COVID after Dry Harbor has not vaccinated them.
Carmen Martinez, a resident since April, was excluded from the vaccinations on Dec. 23, her son Antonio Collazo told The Post.
Collazo said he received a recorded message from Dry Harbor on Christmas Eve and said the residents requesting it had been vaccinated.
Collazo complained that he had applied for the vaccine for his mother, who suffers from mild Alzheimer’s. The 92-year-old would receive her first dose on January 13.
But on January 12, Martinez tested positive for COVID. She was admitted to the hospital and is now unconscious in a ventilator and holding on to life.
“I will never be able to see her alive again,” Collazo said of his mother, a retired federal employee, grandmother and great-grandmother.
A 73-year-old Queens man sent to Dry Harbor to recover from a broken hip also missed the vaccine before Christmas. He tested positive for Covid on January 4, his sister told The Post.
Now he will have to wait 90 days to be vaccinated. He should also discontinue his cancer treatment until he recovers from COVID, she said.
“I do not know what the nursing home thought. Why would they not protect the rehabilitation patients?”
“Last week, the sister received a recorded phone message from Dry Harbor administrator Mark Solomon to ensure that they would give the vaccines to everyone there, and we should not worry about our family members,” she said. A little too late for my brother and the councilor’s mother. ”
Her brother lives on the fourth floor of Dry Harbor, where all the COVID patients are housed.
Solomon did not return messages to comment.
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Holden said he spoke to a State Health Department investigator last week who told him she knew of Dry Harbor to vaccinate only permanent residents at first, but did nothing to correct or stop it.
“Do you think it would be wise in a Covid outbreak to vaccinate only a fraction of the patients, which only gives some people a chance to fight?” Holden said he asked Inspector Carmen Meliton.
“It does not depend on me to say whether it is right or not,” he said. Meliton replied.
Jonah Bruno, a spokeswoman for the state health department, contradicted the rulings, saying nursing homes do not need to submit a vaccination plan to the state.
But Bruno reiterates that Dry Harbor does not follow state protocol, saying the state has no policies that prioritize residents or patients.
“Vaccinations are given to all nursing home residents regardless of short or long term stay,” he said.
Holden is frustrated. “It is clear that one hand does not know what the other is doing at the health department,” he said.
Bruno did not respond when asked if Dry Harbor had informed the Department of Health about Fontanetta’s death. He also did not answer the question of how many casualties or other residents who tested positive in Dry Harbor later died in hospitals.
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Since the pandemic began, the state has counted the reported deaths of patients who died of COVID in nursing homes – not those who made the mistake in nursing homes and died in hospitals.
Last week, Attorney General Letitia James issued a report in which the Cuomo administration exploded because they drastically underreported deaths in nursing homes.