Employees at Kaiser Permanent Medical Center in San Jose spoke Tuesday about the lack of COVID-19 testing in the workplace following a fatal outbreak in the hospital’s emergency department.
At least 60 hospital staff members have tested positive since the outbreak began on Christmas Day, including one who died, Kaiser said Tuesday. Several emergency nurses told NBC Bay Area that they felt that if Kaiser had done routine staff testing in recent months, he could have prevented such a big outbreak.
“I think this could have been really avoided or minimized if tests had been done before,” one employee said.
On Christmas Day, an employee wearing an airy tree costume walked the aisles of the hospital’s emergency department. Kaiser said the suit “probably” is responsible for employees receiving COVID-19, including a registration employee who died Sunday.
Some nurses said they felt the employee wearing the costume has become a scapegoat. They also said that before the outbreak, no tests were done regularly.
Kaiser said that before the outbreak he followed the Santa Clara County order and, in a statement, added: “Although the order states that health care providers can ask workers to wait until 14 days between tests, we offer our health professionals to do the test weekly if they wish. “
Kaiser nurses said the hospital did not make it easy for them to get tested the way other hospitals do.
Since October, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, O’Connor Hospital and St. Louis Regional Hospital. Louise de Gilroy have tested employees who work directly with patients every two weeks. It is mandatory.
Juana Castillo, who works with Enterprise Employee Health at all three hospitals, said being proactive and consistent with the tests has paid off.
“We have a very low positivity rate based on the asymptomatic testing of our employees,” he said.
Kaiser said he is testing all emergency department employees as part of the outbreak investigation.