Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center employees spoke out on Tuesday about a lack of COVID-19 tests in the workplace following a deadly outbreak in the hospital’s emergency department.
At least 60 hospital staff have tested positive since the outbreak began on Christmas Day, including one who died, Kaiser said Tuesday. Several emergency room nurses told NBC Bay Area that they think if Kaiser had routinely tested staff in recent months, it could have prevented such a major outbreak.
“I think this could have been prevented or really minimized if tests had been done beforehand,” said one employee.
On Christmas Day, an employee in an air-powered tree costume walked through the halls of the hospital’s emergency department. Kaiser said the suit is “likely” responsible for employees getting COVID-19, including a registry clerk who died Sunday.
Some nurses said they think the worker wearing the suit has become a scapegoat. They also said they weren’t regularly tested before the outbreak.
Kaiser said it followed the Santa Clara County order prior to the outbreak, adding in a statement, “While the order states that health care providers can ask employees to wait up to 14 days between tests, we are offering our health workers to have tested weekly if they want to. “
Kaiser nurses said the hospital was not making it easy for them to get tested the way some other hospitals are doing.
Since October, the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, O’Connor Hospital and St. Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy have been testing employees who work directly with patients every two weeks. It is needed.
Juana Castillo, who works with Enterprise Employee Health in all three hospitals, said being proactive and consistent with testing has paid off.
“We have a very low level of positivity based on our asymptomatic tests of our employees,” she said.
Kaiser said it is testing all emergency room staff as part of the investigation into the outbreak.