A 66-year-old patient at the Dry Harbor Nursing Home died of COVID-19 last week after the Queens facility only gave vaccines to permanent residents – a misguided policy that the state was reportedly aware of in advance.
Vita Fontanetta, known as Tina, was admitted to the 360-bed facility on January 11 to recover from leg inflammation. When the nursing home handed out vaccines on Jan. 13, she was disfellowshipped, a family member told city councilor Robert Holden.
On Jan. 18, the grandmother of two children was sent back to hospital due to anemia and tested positive for COVID upon arrival, he said.
She died on January 23 at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center.
“I feel like the nursing home was somehow responsible,” Fontanetta’s daughter-in-law told Holden (D-Queens) after a front-page report in The Post revealed the fiasco of Dry Harbor’s selective vaccine.
“It does not appear that the state is adequately monitoring nursing home facilities, neither for Covid prevention nor for the rollout of vaccines,” Holden said Saturday.
A COVID-19 outbreak in Dry Harbor – at least 44 residents and 11 staff members have tested positive since Dec. 22 – reveals flaws in the Cuomo government’s oversight of safety and vaccination in New York nursing homes.
Holden joined Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), who lost an uncle in a nursing home due to COVID-19, and called for a wide-ranging, independent investigation.
Councilman’s 96-year-old mother, Anne Holden, a rehab patient in Dry Harbor, was also banned from an initial round of vaccination that the nursing home gave permanent residents through a federal program run by CFS on Dec. 23.
Anne received a first dose three weeks later, on January 13, when other residents received a second dose. She got COVID on January 20 and was hospitalized. It remains stable.
Other patients and families suffer from COVID after Dry Harbor fails to vaccinate them.
Carmen Martinez, a resident since April, was banned from the vaccinations on Dec. 23, her son Antonio Collazo told The Post.
Collazo said he had received a recorded message from Dry Harbor on Christmas Eve saying it had “vaccinated the residents who asked for it.”
Collazo complained that he had requested the vaccine for his mother, who has mild Alzheimer’s. The 92-year-old then received 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, clinging to life.
“I may never see her alive again, ”Collazo said 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 Christmas vaccine. He tested positive for Covid on Jan. 4, his sister told The Post.
Now he will have to wait 90 days to get vaccinated. He should also stop his cancer treatment until he recovers from COVID, she said.
‘I don’t know what the nursing home was thinking. Why wouldn’t they protect the rehab patients? “
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 that we should not worry about our relatives,” she said. “A little late for my brother and counsel’s mother.”
Her brother stays on the fourth floor of Dry Harbor, where all COVID patients are housed.
Solomon did not return messages asking for comment.
Holden said he spoke with a Department of Health investigator last week who told him she was aware of Dry Harbor’s plan to vaccinate only permanent residents first, but did nothing to correct or stop it. .
“In a Covid outbreak, do you think it is wise to vaccinate only a portion of the patients so that only a few people have a chance to fight? Holden said he asked the inspector, Carmen Meliton.
“It’s not for me to say whether it’s right or not,” he replied.
Jonah Bruno, a health ministry spokesman, contradicted the statements, saying that nursing homes do not need to file a vaccination plan with the state.
But Bruno reiterated that Dry Harbor was not following state protocol, saying the state has no policies that prioritize residents or patients.
“All nursing home residents receive vaccinations, whether they stay short or long,” 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 answer when asked if Dry Harbor had informed the health department of Fontanetta’s death. He also did not answer the question of how many unvaccinated or other residents who tested positive in Dry Harbor later died in hospitals.
Since the start of the pandemic, the state has counted the reported deaths of patients who died of COVID in nursing homes – not those who contracted the bug in nursing homes and died in hospitals.
Last week, State Attorney General Letitia James released a report accusing the Cuomo government of drastically underreporting deaths in nursing homes.