Eight residents of a Milwaukee retirement home for nuns have died of COVID-19, school sisters from Notre Dame Central Pacific Province announced.
Provincial leader Debra Maria Sciano said the former died last week, according to The Associated Press.
“Even though they are older and most of the sisters who went to God are in the late 80’s, 90’s… we didn’t expect them to go that soon,” she told the AP. “So it was just really hard for us.”
All the sisters who tested positive have been isolated, with meals delivered to them in their rooms, Sciano said, though she declined to say how many in total have tested positive for the virus. A similar outbreak was reported in July, killing 13 nuns in a convent in the Detroit area. According to the AP, at least six have died at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Greenfield, Wisconsin.
Local officials have been in contact with the retirement home since November, Linda Wickstrom, a spokesman for the Waukesha County Department of Health & Human Services, told the AP. Wickstrom added that the School Sisters of Notre Dame has disinfected surfaces that people often touch and wear masks.
“Given the extreme infectivity of this virus, it is extremely important for community institutions to practice basic protocols to stop the spread of the disease,” she said.
The deaths recorded at the facility so far are Sisters Rose M. Feess, Mary Elva Wiesner, Dorothy MacIntyre, Mary Alexius Portz, Cynthia Borman, Joan Emily Kaul, Lillia Langreck and Michael Marie Laux, according to the house. Sciano said all the sisters had worked as educators.
“We believe that each of these sisters, and all of them, have made a real difference in this world,” she told the AP. “I just think it’s important that people know that and that they have committed themselves to the end of their lives.”