In Jacksonville, Fla., where the novel coronavirus is surging quickly, a community health worker named Maribel Santos talked with a Latinx line cook who had been exposed to COVID-19. The cook had not responded to calls and texts from the county health department contact tracers for fear that he would lose his job if he had to quarantine. Santos listened to the cook’s concerns, discussed the matter with his employer and then referred him for testing. The cook and his elderly mother tested positive; they both quarantined and recovered, and he went back to work a few weeks later.
In the COVID-19 death of a hospital food worker, a microcosm of the pandemic
Eric Boodman, STAT, June 30
The first employee to die of COVID-19 at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital was a Haitian kitchen worker named Marie Deus. The clinicians who cared for her knew her from the halls and knew she didn’t have all that much patient contact. If a hospital food worker was this sick, what did that mean for them? But it turned out that her illness was part of a pattern. Among the 25,000 or so people who staff the hospitals and clinics of Brigham Health, certain units that didn’t have much patient contact were testing positive more than their bedside colleagues.
New Haven’s effort to help the hardest hit: minority-owned small businesses
Mark Pazniokas, The Connecticut Mirror, July 7
With businesses owned by minorities and women suffering disproportionately during the COVID-19 pandemic, philanthropists and the city are underwriting a $1.5 million emergency loan program that targets small businesses owned by women and minorities.