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Workers at the Burlingame Skilled Nursing facility pleaded for help Wednesday as a coronavirus outbreak raced through the facility over the past two weeks, with scores of employees out sick or quarantined and patients “dying every day.”
“We can’t do this anymore. We need some help,” said Roland Glover, 60, a certified nurse assistant who bathes, dresses and helps patients get to the bathroom. “It’s really bad. It’s really, really, really bad. It’s spreading all over.”
On Wednesday afternoon, employees held a vigil for those who have perished from COVID-19, which by their count is more than a dozen patients in recent weeks — a number at odds with state figures. Within the past few days, an office worker in her 40s also died from the virus, employees say. And although vaccinations among staff and patients began at the Burlingame facility several days before Christmas, the protection from the first dose doesn’t start for about two weeks and by then the outbreak had already taken hold, workers say. A number of workers, for a variety of reasons, hadn’t received the vaccine yet.
As coronavirus cases surge across California — with more than 16,775 active cases at nursing homes and residential care facilities statewide — Bay Area care facilities that were hit hard early in the pandemic are experiencing new outbreaks.
Bay View Rehabilitation Hospital in Alameda County has 78 active cases, while St. Francis Convalescent Pavilion in Daly City, Valley House Rehabilitation in Santa Clara County and Driftwood Healthcare Center in Santa Cruz all have 34 active cases, according to numbers released Monday by the California Department of Public Health.
California’s nursing facilities have been at the center of the coronavirus tragedy from the start: Residents and staff at these homes make up about a third of the state’s 31,100 coronavirus-related deaths.
On Wednesday, more than a dozen workers stood outside the Burlingame Skilled Nursing facility, many in brightly colored scrubs, and described through tears the terror and exhaustion of recent days. Reynafe Mosquera, a licensed vocational nurse, said the facility’s management has limited their interaction to Zoom meetings with supervisors. “They need to see what’s going on,” she said, through tears.
Glover says he lives with his four grandkids in a small house and is worried about bringing the virus home. “It’s getting worse every day.”
“I don’t want to get sick,” he said. “I don’t want to die early.”
The workers, who are represented by AFSCME Council 57, have pointed to the outbreak as part of what they say is a broader, long-term problem with low staffing levels and low wages. Glover, for example, said he has worked at Burlingame Skilled Nursing for seven years and makes $22.48 an hour. The union said it has been in contract bargaining negotiations with parent company Brius — the largest for-profit nursing home operator in California — for months.
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