Kirkland Covid vaccine: first coronavirus epicenter in US receives vaccine, but threat of deadly virus lurks

It was the date when he realized “the whole cascade of symptoms” of a virus that the nursing home he had learned had invaded only four days earlier.

It was also the day he had to make some phone calls that destroyed him.

At 3 o’clock in the morning he can’t shake his mind. He remembers the conversation with the woman at the other end of the line.

“I realized it was early in the morning and it’s very difficult to say I’m sorry your mother died,” Earnest said. – I cried with her.

The two, who had never met, shared a heartbreaking moment. Ten months later, I still talk sometimes, Earnest said.

Earnest, a registered nurse, volunteered to help the Kirkland nursing home in her position as a health care director at another life care center in the state.

They needed all the help they could get. Nearly 70% of staff tested positive for coronavirus in March.

He had no idea that the discreet building on a tree-lined street in a quiet residential neighborhood in Kirkland would become America’s first epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.

“It was like watching a ghost,” she told CNN in March. “You are in a battlefield where reserves are limited. Help slows down to you and there are many casualties. And you cannot see the enemy.”

Ten months after the initial outbreak, she and other front-line health workers are finally getting the best weapon available to fight the virus: the vaccine.

Alice Cortez, a care manager at the Life Care Center in Kirkland, was the first to receive the vaccine here.

“This is an exciting day for everyone, especially for my team,” she said as her voice broke with emotion.

“What I feel now is a new life, a new beginning, but a better life.”

Coronavirus remains a threat to nursing homes

But everyone here is aware that the virus is still raging and remains a threat to the most vulnerable people: the people they are accused of caring for.

As of Dec. 13, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees nursing homes, says 441,000 nursing home patients have tested positive for coronavirus in the United States and 86,775 nursing home residents have died from Covid-19 case. And 1,258 staff members also perished.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t get a phone call or a message that we have a new positive patient or staff,” said Nancy Butner, vice president of the Life Care Centers of America Northwest. Butner said some of her employees were recently hospitalized. Even more patients died in other facilities.

“He’s tireless,” Butner said.

Initially, some families and the public blamed nurses, doctors and staff at the Life Care Center in Kirkland for the outbreak and for not controlling it better.

The phones never stopped ringing. Families were unable to pass – sometimes doctors could not – due to other unwanted calls.

“It was very difficult to enter a patient’s room and hear the phone. And you think he’s a doctor and you get there and a person says he has a cure for Covid, giving you a prescription as crazy as it is, “Earnst said.

Too often, it was the most annoying type of call: death threats, enough to require security. Earnest was afraid to go to her car one night after treating the patients.

“My husband said, ‘Make sure you have your gun,'” she said, able to laugh about it now. But it was serious, as were the threats.

Then there was the sight of devastated families appearing every day.

Some had lost their mother or father to the unit, and others had a family still infected with Covid-19. They sat on chairs outside the window of their family members’ room, ate lunch with them, and had muffled conversations through the glass.

Inside, staff were facing a virus that no one knew enough about.

It was before the public was told to wear masks, before the elbow blow became the new handshake, before all the symptoms were known. And it was before tens of thousands of people began to get sick and die in New York, which soon became the second epicenter of the virus.

Life Care Center challenged the decision. In September, a state administrative judge focused largely on the Kirkland Life Care Center, not the state’s findings, which mimicked the federal ones.

The judge said the state agency “provided relatively little evidence that the facility failed to meet any expected standards of care or did not comply with public health guidelines.”

The federal appeal has not been decided.

Changes since the March outbreak

At first, there were not enough tests for coronavirus and it took days to get results. Now they have quick tests that take minutes.

In some rooms, there were three patients. Now, that comes down to one – or two if they can be properly spaced.

Prior to the virus, the facility accepted up to 124 patients. Now they capped at 97.

At that time, there was a constant concern about the lack of personal protective equipment. Now, a nearby unit has a large room filled with boxes of masks, gloves and other equipment.

But 10 months after the initial viral outbreak, the seats for family members remain outside the windows of the rooms. Room numbers are written on the windows.

It has become a semi-permanent device because visitors are not yet allowed to enter.

There is no family hand, no hugs and kisses. It is simply too dangerous, the virus too contagious. The staff knows that now.

At first, Earnest, a registered nurse, informed doctors and members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about what she saw in patients. I am now receiving constant updates and new security protocols from government agencies.

Covid-19 affects staff inside and outside the nursing home

Butner says what people don’t often think about is that staff have to fight the virus at work and at home.

This year Earnest lost an uncle to Covid-19. So before Christmas she had to have a “discussion” with her mother about how she wanted to die.

“If he got her, what did he want? Did he want to be on a fan or did he want to be … to leave?”

It was the hardest conversation he had with his family. But he says he couldn’t help it. No one should.

It’s too awful when they are taken and isolated and you don’t get to know their desires. Sometimes you can’t say goodbye, she said.

Earnest said he hopes the vaccine will make these conversations less urgent. But not everyone in health care is looking forward to getting it.

“We surveyed the staff at our facilities before educating about the vaccine. Twenty percent said no, never. They will not be vaccinated,” she said.

For now, she says, Life Care Centers of America does not make it mandatory. The reason is simple.

“We simply could not lose 20% of our staff,” she said. Another effect of this virus is the extreme lack of nursing staff for all medical care.

She hopes that with education, the percentage will decrease.

For the assistance of doctor Christy Carmichael, her decision to take the vaccine made everyone breathe. Last week she had promised one of her surviving patients that Covid-19 would receive the vaccine.

“I said for sure you can. Unfortunately, she died,” Carmichael said, before dissolving in tears after her vaccine was shot. “I promised him he would get it, so it’s just sad that he didn’t get to see it today.”