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 wrong policy that the state allegedly knew in advance.
Vita Fontanetta, known as Tina, was admitted to the 360-bed facility to recover from swollen legs on Jan. 11. When the seniors ’residence removed the vaccines on Jan. 13, she was excluded, a family member told city councilor Robert Holden.
On January 18, the grandmother of two children was sent back to the hospital due to anemia and tested positive for COVID on arrival, she said.
He died at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center on January 23.
“I think the nursing home was somehow responsible,” Fontanetta’s daughter-in-law said in Holden, D-Queens, after a front-page report in The Post exposed Dry’s selective vaccine failure. Harbor.
“It does not appear that the state is properly overseeing the facilities of nursing homes, whether for the prevention of Covid or the deployment of vaccines,” Holden said Saturday.
An outbreak of COVID-19 in Dry Harbor (at least 44 residents and 11 employees have tested positive since Dec. 22) reveals flaws in Cuomo administration safety oversight and vaccination at Nova nursing homes York.
Holden joined House of Representatives Ron Kim (D-Queens), who lost an uncle in a nursing home due to COVID-19, calling for a comprehensive, independent investigation.
The councilor’s 96-year-old mother, Anne Holden, a rehabilitation patient in Dry Harbor, was also excluded from a first round of vaccinations the nursing home gave to permanent residents through a federal program administered by CVS on 23 December.
Anne received a first dose three weeks later on January 13, when other residents received a second dose. She went down with COVID on January 20 and was hospitalized. It remains in a stable state.
Other patients and families suffer from COVID after Dry Harbor did not vaccinate them.
Carmen Martinez, a resident since April, was excluded from vaccines on Dec. 23, her son Antonio Collazo told The Post.
Collazo said he received a recorded message from Dry Harbor on Christmas night saying he had vaccinated “those residents who requested it.”
Collazo complained that he had requested the vaccine for his mother, who suffers from mild Alzheimer’s. The 92-year-old was scheduled for the first dose on January 13th.
But on January 12, Martinez tested positive for COVID. She was hospitalized and is now unconscious on a ventilator, clinging to life.
“Maybe I will never see her alive again, ”said Collazo about her 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 tested positive for Covid on Jan. 4, his sister told The Post.
You will now have to wait 90 days to get vaccinated. He must also stop cancer treatment until he recovers from COVID, he said.
“I don’t know what the residence was thinking. Why wouldn’t they protect rehabilitation patients? “
Last week, the sister received a recorded phone message from Dry Harbor administrator Mark Solomon stating that “they will give the vaccines to everyone out there and we shouldn’t worry about our family members.” he said. “A little too late for my brother and the councilor’s mother.”
His brother remains on the fourth floor of Dry Harbor, where all COVID patients are housed.
Solomon did not return messages seeking comment.
Holden said he spoke with a State Department of Health researcher last week who told him he knew of Dry Harbor’s plan to vaccinate only permanent residents, but did nothing to correct or stop it.
“Do you think it is prudent in a Covid outbreak to vaccinate only a portion of patients, giving only a few people a chance to fight? “Holden said he asked Inspector Carmen Meliton.
“It’s not up to me to say whether it’s right or not,” Meliton said.
Jonah Bruno, a spokesman for the State Department of Health, contradicted the claims, saying nursing homes are not required to submit a vaccination plan to the state.
But Bruno reiterated that Dry Harbor did not follow state protocol, saying the state has no policy that prioritizes residents or patients.
“Vaccines are being given to all residents of nursing homes regardless of their short- or long-term stay,” he said.
Holden is frustrated. “Obviously one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing in the state health department,” he said.
Bruno did not respond when asked if Dry Harbor had informed the Department of Health of Fontanetta’s death. Nor did he 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 counted the reported deaths of patients who died of COVID in nursing homes, not those who detected the error in nursing homes and died in hospitals.
Last week, State Attorney General Letitia James issued a report exploiting the Cuomo administration for drastically reporting deaths in nursing homes.