A 66-year-old patient at Dry Harbor Nursing Home died of COVID-19 last week after the Queens facility gave vaccines only to permanent residents – a wrong policy the state knew about beforehand.
Vita Fontanetta, known as Tina, was admitted to the 360-bed unit to recover from her foot inflammation on January 11th. When the nursing home removed the vaccines on Jan. 13, it was shut down, said a family member of City Councilman Robert Holden.
On January 18, the two’s grandmother was sent back to hospital due to anemia and tested positive for COVID on arrival, he said.
He died at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center on January 23.
“I feel that the nursing home was somehow responsible,” Fontanetta’s daughter-in-law told Holden (D-Queens) after a front-page report in The Post exposed the Dry Harbor selective vaccine fiasco.
“The state does not appear to be adequately monitoring asylum facilities, either to prevent Covid or to launch vaccines,” Holden said on Saturday.
A COVID-19 outbreak in Dry Harbor – at least 44 residents and 11 employees have tested positive since Dec. 22 – reveals flaws in the Cuomo administration’s oversight of safety and vaccination in nursing homes in New York.
Holden joined MP Ron Kim (D-Queens), who lost an uncle in a nursing home due to COVID-19, calling for a comprehensive and independent investigation.
The councillor’s mother, 96-year-old Anne Holden, a Dry Harbor rehabilitation patient, was also excluded from a first round of vaccinations the nursing home offered to permanent residents through a federal program run by Dry Harbor. CVS on December 23.
Anne received a first dose three weeks later, on January 13, when other residents received a second dose. She came with COVID on January 20 and was hospitalized. It remains stable.
Other patients and families are suffering from COVID after Dry Harbor failed to vaccinate them.
Carmen Martinez, a resident since April, was excluded from vaccinations on December 23, her son Antonio Collazo told The Post.
Collazo said he received a recorded message from Dry Harbor on Christmas Eve, saying he had vaccinated “those residents who requested it.”
Collazo complained that he requested the vaccine for his mother, who suffers from mild Alzheimer’s. The 92-year-old was scheduled to receive her first dose on January 13.
But on January 12, Martinez tested positive for COVID. She was hospitalized and is now unconscious on a ventilator, hanging on to life.
“I may never see her alive again, “said Collazo 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 pre-Christmas vaccine. He gave positive results to Covid on January 4, his sister told The Post.
Now he will have to wait 90 days to get vaccinated. He also has to stop cancer treatment until he recovers from COVID, she said.
“I don’t know what the old people’s home was thinking. Why not protect patients with rehabilitation? ”
Last week, the sister received a recorded phone message from Dry Harbor administrator Mark Solomon, assuring that “they will 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 counselor’s mother.”
Her brother remains on the fourth floor of Dry Harbor, where all COVID patients are housed.
Solomon has not posted any comments.
Holden said he spoke last week with a state Department of Health investigator who told him he knew about the Dry Harbor plan to vaccinate only permanent residents first, but did nothing to correct or stop it.
“Do you think it is wise in a Covid outbreak to vaccinate only some patients, giving only people a chance to fight? Holden said he asked Inspector Carmen Meliton.
“It’s not up to me to say it’s right or not,” he said.
Jonah Bruno, a spokesman for the state Department of Health, contradicted the statements, saying that nursing homes are not required to submit a vaccination plan to the state.
But Bruno reiterated that Dry Harbor does not abide by state protocol, saying the state has no policy to prioritize residents or patients.
“Vaccinations are given to all nursing home residents, regardless of their short-term or long-term stay,” he said.
Holden is frustrated. “Obviously one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing at the state Department of Health,” he said.
Bruno did not respond when asked if Dry Harbor had informed the Department of Health of Fontanetta’s death. He also did not answer the question of how many unvaccinated residents or other residents who tested positive in Dry Harbor later died in hospitals.
Since the pandemic began, the state has assessed the reported deaths of patients who died of COVID in nursing homes – not those who caught the error in nursing homes and died in hospitals.
Last week, Attorney General Letitia James released a report that explodes the Cuomo administration for not drastically reporting deaths at home.