'I can't hug my kid': how coronavirus is upending medical workers' lives
Critical care nurse Alina Weissman said she is usually “not a crier”. But she has been inconsolable since having to move away from her husband, who has a pre-existing condition, and 12-yearold daughter for fear of contaminating them with coronavirus.
Weissman is one of thousands of medical workers on the frontline of New York City’s Covid-19 crisiswho have been forced to cobble together makeshift living situations – sleeping in hotels, basements, borrowed apartments and even cars – to avoid bringing the virus home to their housemates and families.
“I went to see my family yesterday from across the street and my daughter was begging me to just hug her,” the 42-year-old said. “[She was] crying and I was crying. This is the worst thing I ever felt. Absolutely horrible that I can’t hug my kid.” She fears she will not get to see them properly until September.
Many have also made the difficult decision to stop seeing their partners and children for potentially months to avoid infecting them.
After unsuccessfully trying to get a room at Four Seasons hotel in Manhattan – which is among the New York hotels providing free lodging to Covid-19 medical personnel – she managed to borrow an apartment from a friend.
But she said many of her colleagues at her hospital were still “scrambling” to find a place to stay this week.
“We consider ourselves to be tough in this profession, we see a lot every day, and people are breaking down because they have loved ones in the hospital, they live with their parents, they live with their kids, they don’t want to leave their kids.”
Though the number of people being hospitalized in New York City appears to be leveling out, more than 18,000 patients remained packed into its hospitals, this week, and medical workers are still at risk. According to Johns Hopkins, 5,150 people had died in hospital in the city after contracting coronavirus as of Friday morning.
Nurse Luke Adams, 35, spent 10 days sleeping in his car after arriving in New York from his home in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, to assist in the coronavirus effort. He said he tried Four Seasons and Airbnb but didn’t get any calls back.
“I came with the little baby mattress in the back of the rented car just assuming that there would be some lag time between when I showed up and when there would probably be some programmes in place for the people that were going to come,” he said.
He has since been allocated a room at a hotel near Staten Island University hospital, where he is temporarily working, but he said it’s important that medical workers know they have somewhere to sleep.
“We are asking for a lot of people to come and help and one of the biggest hurdles that they will face is ‘OK, I want to come help but where am I going to be putting my head?’”
The father of two, who missed seeing his nine-month-old daughter crawl for the first time, said being separated from family is taking its toll on medical workers.
“We’re dealing with a lot in the hospital and then you have the mental aspect, the isolation in that way from family and stuff is also tough.”
Another medical volunteer, Dr Richard Levitan, who travelled from New Hampshire to work at Bellevue hospital centre, was asked to leave his brother’s apartment by the building’s board of directors, according to the New York Times.
New York nurse Meagan Mullany, 25, said healthcare workers are being treated like “pariahs”.
“It breaks my heart honestly because I know everyone’s scared and I don’t fault people for being scared, but at the same time I just wish people would understand what we’re all giving up,” she added. “Not to make myself out to be a martyr, because I’m not, I’m just doing my job, but I just wish people would be a little more understanding.”
She usually lives with her parents, who have co-morbidities, and siblings, one of whom has severe asthma, but has decided to move in with her boyfriend.
“I hope I’m making the right decision. I feel like there’s no good decision in all this,” she said. “Because the hospital offered housing, but the problem is I’m going to be like all alone and I don’t know if I could take the social isolation right now.”
Lance Eljeer Hawkins, 46, a surgical technician at a Manhattan hospital, decided it was safest not to see either of his two children, who he doesn’t live with but usually sees several times a week, because of the outbreak. He is also now looking for alternative housing so he does not put his sister and nephew, who he lives with, at risk.
“It weighs on you. To make that decision not to see them [the children] until this dies down a bit or slows down a bit and we can get back to some level of normalcy, and I use that word not very stringently because I think nothing will be normal after this. So it’s tough,” he said.
For those who work outside the state, coronavirus is also causing upheaval.
Deloris Wright, 64, usually commutes from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to work at a senior living facility in Philadelphia, but following the outbreak she is sleeping at her workplace.
She said: “This is week number four for me at work. I haven’t been going home because I don’t want to travel from here to Brooklyn and then bring back anything in here … I’m really taking it in stride and just trying to be calm and not anxious.”
Meanwhile, at home, she has ongoing problems with her landlord who she said has left holes in the wall of her rented apartment. “All I can do is just hope for the best, because I’m not there so I can’t even fight them. I just have to pause.”
New York City Emergency Management said it is working with Greater New York Hospital Association and NYC Health and Hospitals to provide accommodation for frontline healthcare workers who a spokesman said can “request a room through the hospital with which they work or have been assigned”.
“The rooms are used to isolate healthcare workers who are displaying Covid-19 symptoms or have come into contact with a positive Covid-19 patient and do not want to return home in order to protect their loved ones from potential exposure,” he added.
He said they have set up a call centre for people to access the service, which works with designated “points of contact”, in place at all hospitals, to make hotel referrals.
Four Seasons said the hotel is “incredibly sorry to hear about the nurses’ experience” and that they had not anticipated the number of requests the hotel would receive. It is now working with hospitals and medical associations to fill its 225 available rooms rather than handling bookings directly and this week it said it was at full capacity with medical professionals.
A spokesman for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office said: “Every day, healthcare professionals are on the frontlines battling Covid-19 in hospitals around New York state – including tens of thousands of volunteers from other communities. Generous New Yorkers have proactively offered hotel rooms and apartments to support these heroes, and every day we are connecting them to accommodations in a safe, responsible, and coordinated manner.”