PRIDE AND PANIC: Children of health-care

According to a CDC report, at least 9,000 health-care workers in the United States have been infected, and at least 27 have died

When Marcela Vasquez, a phlebotomist at Long Island Community Hospital in New York, gasped for air in a quiet room at home, she wondered: If I die, who will take care of my children?

As the fevers and body aches wracked her body, Vasquez’s 13-year-old daughter, Alyssa Barnes, feared the same.

“I really need her,” Alyssa said of her mother, 38, who tested positive for the coronavirus in late March. “Just losing her, it would change my entire life.”

It’s unclear how many front-line health-care workers are also parents but, at home, their children live with the anxiety that mom or dad will get sick or that they’ll bring the virus home and die.

“I just thought that she was going to die in her room,” Alyssa said, recalling the anxiety that overwhelmed her while her mother was sick. “I was so scared she was going to die by herself.”

At least 9,000 health-care workers have been infected by the coronavirus so far in the United States, and at least 27 have died, according to an April report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It’s not just doctors and nurses who have fallen victim: Non-medical workers, including hospital security guards and housekeepers, have also been sickened and died.

Early in the pandemic, the nation’s personal protective equipment supply shortage became glaringly clear — even emergency room nurses were reusing N95 masks for days at a time. Non-medical workers were often afforded less protective gear than their colleagues who treated patients — or none at all — according to union leaders and hospital employees.

Though her children have their father, Vasquez said, “No one takes care of you like your mother.”

Alyssa said she was always somewhat worried about her mother’s job, and news of the pandemic raised her fears a bit. Then the virus came to New York.

Vasquez, who believes she was exposed at her job, returned to work in April after her symptoms disappeared, but about a week later, a fever returned. She also developed pneumonia and has remained at home after testing negative for the virus late last month.

Katherine Heaviside, a spokesperson for the hospital, said it always had an “adequate supply of PPE ready for our personnel and will continue to do so until this crisis has subsided.”

“The instances of front-line workers at Long Island Community Hospital testing positive for COVID-19 symptoms appear to be no greater or no lesser than those of nearly every other hospital across the region,” she said, adding that “the spread of this virus is not exclusive to a hospital atmosphere, and it is impossible to identify any person’s point and place of infection.”

Vasquez said her family worked hard to ensure the virus didn’t spread throughout the household. Family members wore masks and kept their distance from her.

But sometimes even the best precautions fail.

That was the case with Sherry-Ann Ramkaran, a certified nursing assistant at AristaCare at Cedar Oaks, a skilled nursing facility in South Plainfield, N.J., who said she took multiple precautions to avoid bringing the virus home.

She had masks. She washed her hands. She sanitized. She even changed her routine. Ramkaran said she used to head straight for the shower after getting home from work but after the pandemic, she would undress at the door inside her house to minimize the risk of tracking it in on her clothing.

Still, the virus rampaged through her home, infecting not just her but her husband and daughter as well. Only her 19-year-old son did not get sick.

Ramkaran, 43, said she didn’t know where she picked up the virus, but her daughter, Simran Singh, 21, said, “It’s obvious.”

“I know the kind of work that she’s done; I know the extent and the hours that she has to work,” Singh said. “She works so hard and just knowing what