‘They said that I was OK’: 2 workers at Oregon veterans home speak out after coronavirus diagnosis

Disorganized and delayed coronavirus testing for employees at the state veterans home in Lebanon left infected caregivers on the job for days while they closely monitored and attended to elderly residents.

While it’s impossible to know if the workers spread the virus to residents or staff, accounts from two nursing assistants indicate that strict testing criteria at the onset of the outbreak likely stymied early efforts to limit the disease at the nursing home.

The state’s early efforts to wrangle what is now a rapidly growing crisis have been hobbled by insufficient testing availability, which forced federal officials to severely limit who qualified for a test.

Katrina Vink and Rosemary Hilton are the first health care workers in Oregon to publicly confirm that they have coronavirus.

They said they tried to get tested the day after two residents became the first patients identified with COVID-19 at the Edward C. Allworth Veterans’ Home.

But the women told The Oregonian/OregonLive they were turned away from a testing site where they had been directed by the veterans home because they had only mild cold symptoms – though they also reported they had direct contact with two men sick with the virus.

“They said that I was OK,” Hilton said. “It reassured me.”

They worked about another week at the home as the cases grew to 14 among 151 residents — the most to test positive in any one place in Oregon. A staff member also tested positive during that time, but veterans home officials won’t say if that person is a caregiver.

More recently, one of the first two coronavirus patients, a man in his 90s, died from the virus and one more resident has become infected and two others have symptoms, state officials say.

Three of the nursing home’s four separate buildings have residents diagnosed with the disease, dashing initial hopes to contain the virus to just one of them.

Lebanon, Oregon coronavirus outbreak

The Edward C. Allworth Veterans’ Home in Lebanon, Oregon, where there is an outbreak of coronavirus. March 18, 2020. Beth Nakamura/Staff

Vink and Hilton finally submitted swabs for analysis last week and said they received their positive test results over the phone two days later. Vink stopped working the day she got tested and Hilton stopped working the day she got her results.

Vink said she hopes people will understand how front-line workers have tried to help people stricken with the virus during the worldwide pandemic while facing risks themselves. She said she was worried about exposure like anyone would under the circumstances, but essentially felt fine.

“You definitely have to have compassion to do this kind of work,” she said. “Otherwise it’s not for you.”

Vink and other workers ramped up safeguards, donning extra gear to guard themselves and their elderly charges, but she said she was denied the basic precaution of a timely diagnosis.

COVID-19 symptoms vary, said Dr. John Townes, an Oregon Health & Science University infectious disease expert, and could include congestion and a light cough, the symptoms the nursing assistants had.

Those who live or work in congregate settings such as nursing homes ought to be tested, Townes said, speaking in general, not specifically of the veterans home cases.

A spokeswoman for Samaritan Health Services said the urgent care clinic, where Vink and Hilton were rebuffed, has always followed Oregon Health Authority criteria for who can get tested for the new coronavirus.

The state’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which owns the nursing home, said in a statement that managers have followed “all the protocols and guidelines recommended” by state and federal health officials to prevent the spread of the disease.

The steps include “the use of personal protective equipment, emphasizing hand hygiene, matching dedicated care providers to COVID-19 patients wherever possible and limiting the numbers of staff who provide care to COVID-19 patients,” the statement said.

Most of the home’s residents are over 70 and have underlying health conditions – the two populations most at risk of catching the virus and having severe complications. About a third of them are over 90.

‘SOMEBODY ELSE COULD’VE GOTTEN IT’

Four other senior care homes in Oregon have confirmed COVID-19 cases. Three employees and five residents at the Regency Park assisted living and memory care center in Washington County have tested positive. An employee at The Springs at Clackamas Woods in Milwaukie, also an assisted living center, has tested positive, as has an employee at Maryville Memory Care in Beaverton. A resident at the state veterans home in The Dalles has also tested positive.

One other health care worker in Linn County is among more than 300 people with known coronavirus cases across Oregon. State officials have said the worker isn’t associated with the veterans home.

Oregon health authorities are releasing little information about anyone infected with the virus so it’s not clear how many other health care workers may be among those with the disease. Most of what is known about them has been released by county officials, the private businesses where they work and now Vink and Hilton.

In Lebanon, most of the veterans home’s roughly 225 employees have been tested, according to Veterans’ Affairs officials. But they have declined to say how many have results back or how many have tested positive other than the initial confirmation of one employee.

“This decision has been made to protect the staff’s private and legally protected health information,” the agency said in a statement.

An email obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive indicates five veterans home employees have now tested positive, though it didn’t indicate what their jobs are. The email, sent Wednesday to local officials by Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital, also noted that six inpatient and 149 outpatient tests were pending, though it didn’t specify if the tests were for the employees. Veterans’ Affairs wouldn’t confirm the numbers.

Oregon’s corner of the pandemic officially began Feb. 28, when the state’s first patient tested positive – an employee at a Lake Oswego elementary school. The Oregon Health Authority announced it would test only people who had symptoms and traveled to an affected part of the world or who had contact with a known case, as well as people hospitalized with COVID-19 symptoms who tested negative for the flu.

Hilton said the limits may have put other veterans home employees at risk.

“It’s kind of scary to think about it. Not knowing that whole entire time,” she said. “You had it and you didn’t know, and somebody else could’ve gotten it.”

The nursing assistants’ experience reveals a system that failed to protect them and their patients, said the executive director of SEIU 503, a union representing many of Oregon’s nursing home workers but not those at the veterans home.

“It’s really problematic,” said Melissa Unger. “The reality is that these women did what they thought they should do.”

The Edward C. Allworth Veterans' Home in Lebanon, Oregon, where there is an outbreak of coronavirus. March 18, 2020. Beth Nakamura/Staff

‘BEING COUGHED ALL OVER’

Vink, 42, of Salem and Hilton, 43, of Albany work the overnight shift at the veterans home from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Vink doesn’t usually work in Bravo 2, one of the home’s 11 14-bed units spread across four buildings named Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta. But one of the usual nursing assistants had called in sick, Vink said, so she was assigned to fill in.

Hilton said she was also working in Bravo 2 at the time.

It was March 5 and Oregon by then had three cases of coronavirus identified in Washington and Umatilla counties.

Because some of the veterans were visibly sick, Vink said she and other staff wore gloves and masks as a precaution against infectious disease, but they didn’t have to wear the full gear yet because no coronavirus cases had been confirmed there.

“For quite a while we were just being coughed all over,” she said.

At least two of the sick residents in the unit got tested for coronavirus and health officials announced on March 11 that both men had the infection.

The announcement brought a flurry of concern and activity at the nursing home.

After learning of the diagnoses, the women didn’t want to return to their own homes and expose their families. Instead, they stayed together for two nights in a room at the Best Western in Lebanon, which they said the veterans home arranged for them.

On March 12, they tried to get tested for coronavirus after they and other staff got a text message from the veterans home saying that anybody who wanted to submit samples could do so without charge at the Samaritan Urgent Care clinic near the nursing home.

A “slew” of staff got in line to get tested, Vink said, and she and Hilton waited 45 minutes in Vink’s car for their turn. It was the first day that the clinic offered drive-through testing, the Samaritan Health Services spokeswoman said.

“As soon as we found out it was free, everyone went there,” Vink said.

Vink and Hilton told clinic staff that they worked with the sick residents at the veterans home and that they had stuffy noses and light coughs.

The workers asked the women if they had fevers. Vink and Hilton said they didn’t.

But because they didn’t have fevers or deep coughs, the women said, they were told they didn’t qualify.

Another message from the veterans home came soon after, this one urging only employees with symptoms to try to get tested.

“The urgent care is overwhelmed. We may lose due to abuse,” read the message, signed by the veterans home administrator, Abe Andrade. “I can’t stress the importance of being good stewards with these resources.”

Brian Hedrick, an RN, tests people for coronavirus at the drive thru testing site at Lebanon Samaritan Urgent Care Walk-In Clinic in Lebanon, Oregon. March 19, 2020. Beth Nakamura/Staff

The women went back to work, and they soon moved into a three-bedroom apartment a short walk from the nursing home with several fellow nursing assistants. It also was provided by the veterans home’s nonprofit management.

Hilton said while at work she brushed residents’ teeth, helped them out of day clothes and into night clothes and used cold cloths to treat one of the residents who was sick with coronavirus and had a fever.

Vink said she carried out her regular duties, including bringing residents water, changing their clothes and doing range-of-motion exercises with the residents.

The two nursing assistants weren’t allowed to go from one unit or building in the veterans home to another and they had to wear extensive protective gear before going into a sick patient’s room and discard most of it when coming out, unless their next stop was another sick patient – then they replaced only their gloves.

The full equipment consisted of a mask, face shield, gloves and gown.

‘IT’S PRETTY SCARY’

Vink got sick first.

By the end of her shift on March 17, she started to run a fever, she said. She went to the urgent care clinic as soon as it opened that morning, she said. This time, she got tested.

She went back to the apartment and has not been back to work since.

Her supervisor told Vink to go home to Salem but she said she would stay in Lebanon because she didn’t want to infect her husband, who works at the Oregon State Hospital, and her four children.

Two days after she got tested, Vink said she got a call from Marion County health officials who told her that she had tested positive for COVID-19. The Oregon Health Authority called next, she said, and asked what her symptoms were, who she may have exposed and what her routines had been.

The health authority officials also asked that Vink stay put at the apartment.

Hilton’s symptoms, on the other hand, had stayed relatively mild, though she still had a cough and was congested.

Also on March 17, the Oregon Health Authority set up a tent outside the veterans home near the employee parking lot for staff to get tested. Hilton lined up but workers sent her instead to the urgent care clinic because she had symptoms. The clinic would be able to get the results back to her more quickly, she was told.

A tent erected by the Oregon National Guard sits behind the Edward C. Allworth Veterans' Home in Lebanon, Oregon, where there is an outbreak of coronavirus. March 18, 2020. Beth Nakamura/Staff

Hilton headed to the clinic, then went to work later that evening and again the following day.

On March 19, Hilton got a call from Samaritan Urgent Care saying she tested positive for COVID-19. The person on the line told her to stay at the apartment, she said.

Hilton said her supervisor also told her to go back to her home, but she said she couldn’t because she lives with her mother who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and a nephew with cystic fibrosis.

Vink said they both have been told to remain at the apartment until the end of the month.

The women have been doing their best to keep away from the two other caregivers staying there.

Those nursing assistants also work at the veterans home and were tested last week at the on-site tent. One got a negative result Tuesday and subsequently went back to work. Another went back to work and has yet to get her results. Now both of them have gone to the urgent care clinic for tests because they’ve developed COVID-19 symptoms, including a fever, cough, aches and congestion.

Vink and Hilton are staying in a back bedroom at the apartment for the most part. Before their roommates got sick, Vink said they had been cooking and serving meals so that Vink and Hilton didn’t contaminate the food, dishes and kitchen. They all make liberal use of the disinfectant Virex, Vink said.

Hilton said her family has been dropping off clothes and veterans home staff brought board games and a DVD player along with some DVDs for the women. She’s having trouble concentrating, she said, but nonetheless has been making her way through “The Best of Me,” a romance novel by Nicholas Sparks.

The two said they’ve suffered severe body aches that make it hard to sleep because the pain is at its worst when lying down.

Hilton said she’s feeling better but remains very tired, and the combination of the virus with her asthma has made it hard to breathe.

Vink is now on the mend but said that at a particularly low point she felt that “if I jumped off the balcony and hit my head, I would feel better.”

“It’s pretty scary, you know?” she said.

“One person will get over it, but another could die.”

-- Fedor Zarkhin

fzarkhin@oregonian.com

desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin

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