When nurses and other healthcare workers die young at COVID-19: shot

Both siblings Jasmine and Josh Obla tested positive for COVID-19 on the same day. Only one of them survived.

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Both siblings Jasmine and Josh Obla tested positive for COVID-19 on the same day. Only one of them survived.

Obra family

Jasmine Obla believed that she wouldn’t exist without her brother Joshua. Seven-year-old Josh asked him to be siblings when he realized that his parents weren’t going to live forever.

By spring 2020, Josh and Jasmine, 29 and 21, shared a condominium in Anaheim, California, not far from Disneyland.

Both worked in a 147-bed, locked nursing facility that specializes in caring for the elderly with cognitive impairment such as Alzheimer’s disease. In Alsheimer’s disease, nursing student Jasmine was supervised by registered nurse Josh.

Both took the COVID-19 test on the same day in June.

Both tests turned positive.

But only one of them survived.

Although COVID-19 is far more fatal to older adults than to young adults, Kaiser Health News and the Guardian’s front-line health worker mortality study found staff under 30 working A number of cases exposed to were revealed and collapsed again.

Of the 167 front-line confirmed worker deaths reported by reporters, 21 medical staff or 13% of the total were less than 40 and 8 (5%) were less than 30 .. COVID-19 Median age of death The median death rate for healthcare workers in the database is 57, but for the general population it is 78. This is because the reporter included only those working-age people who were treating patients during the pandemic. Healthcare workers are much more exposed to viruses.

Andrew Chan, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, says the young healthcare professional is “a stage of my career and a stage of my life.” “The lost lives among young people associated with COVID should be considered unacceptable to us as a society,” he adds.

With the surge in coronavirus cases and the continuing shortage of life-saving devices such as N95 masks, gowns and gloves, national health care workers face disproportionate risks. s the study Found that health care workers of any age were more than three times as likely to be infected as the general population, and were at high risk if they were colored or had to work without proper personal protective equipment. .. Color people are also likely to have poor access to PPE.

In an interview, the relatives and friends of these young victims described certain persistent grief. Everything was put first for these front line workers. They were just embarking on their career. Some still lived in family homes. Others were looking forward to getting married and having young children. Some of the victim’s parents, who were contacted by the Guardian and KHN, could not tell what had happened, so their sadness was immeasurable.

“Barely blooming”

Valeria Viveros, a 20-year-old nursing assistant, “barely bloomed,” says her uncle Gustavo Urrea. She made a ceviche for her patient at a nursing home in Riverside, California, where Urea was able to see her self-confident growth. When she first got sick with the virus, she went to a hospital but was sent home with Tylenol. She returned in an ambulance a few days later — her final trip.

“We were all destroyed,” Urea says. “Incredible”

In May, Dulce Garcia, 29, an interpreter at a medical facility in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, died. “It’s not just a real mood,” says friend Brittany Mathis. Garcia was a man who wouldn’t let his friends drive if he had too many drinks. She loved to go to Bachata, Merengue and Reggaeton to dance. “There were many things she wasn’t finished with,” Matisse says.

People are For all ages Underlying conditions such as diabetes and obesity are at high risk of severe COVID-19 infection, and the specific effects of the virus on young adults are now clear.

Doctors in New York noticed that younger than normal patients had a stroke, which depressed the “mean age of stroke patients with macrovascular stroke,” the most devastating type, said Thomas Oxley. Mount Sinai Medical Systems Neurosurgeon. COVID-19 infections cause inflammation not only in the blood vessels but also in the lungs, often causing blood clots.

“Too many to think about”

Angela Padula thought she and Dennis Brad did everything right.

Padula, 27, and Brad, 29, got jobs on February 8th. She was a special education teacher and addiction technician at Conifer Park, a private addiction treatment facility in Glenville, NY.

Angela Padula and Dennis Blood were engaged in early February. On May 13, Bradt died of a heart attack.

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Angela padula

Angela Padula and Dennis Blood were engaged in early February. On May 13, Bradt died of a heart attack.

Angela padula

The couple wanted to save several years on their wedding, but by the beginning of April they had already purchased an engagement ring and a wedding ring. Brad has a sweet tooth and chose a raspberry swirl wedding cake.

After the pandemic hit, Brad started taking a shower when he got home from work. He and Padula wore masks when they were out, usually only for food and gas. They stopped visiting their immunocompromised parents.

On April 5, Bradt went to the hospital complaining of fever, abdominal symptoms and painlessness. His COVID-19 test turned negative. Immediately he couldn’t breathe. Another test was positive. On April 16, he was put on a ventilator. In the process, he suffocated with his vomiting and his lungs collapsed.

Padula assumes that Brad was infected at work, and it is unknown if he had sufficient PPE. Coniferous Park did not respond to the query, but 12 employees and 6 patients at the facility were COVID-19 positive, according to local health authorities. Padula herself had severe symptoms and was taken by ambulance to the emergency room.

She was not allowed to visit Brad and was quarantined alone at home, where she had her 28th birthday, taking anxiety medications prescribed by her doctor.

On 13 May, Padula said he had a heart attack when the doctor tried to move Brad away from the ventilator. She and Brad’s mother were allowed to say goodbye to him. But “by the time we got there he was gone,” Padula said in an interview. “He didn’t look like himself,” he swollen and garnished with a tube.

Padula is still ill today. Pain in her arms, legs, and back awakens her at night. She feels like the virus has taken over her life.

“There are days when I have too many thoughts,” she says. “You’ll see people go crazy for Facebook. It offends me. I want to be happy with them, but it’s very hard for me to be happy. Was planning to have.”

“He feels like he’s with me”

Two months before Josh and Jasmine Obla became ill, Josh posted two photos on Instagram. One was a picture of the Disneyland fireworks display. The other is a photo of myself wearing a face mask and dressed in a medical scrub with a peace sign.

The caption says, “Hey, it’s been 1 minute!” “It was a tough month for all of us.” He worked with vulnerable people and said, “Every night I go home, I’m mentally exhausted just thinking that I might have symptoms the next day.” Stated.

Still, Josh is a kind and sympathetic nurse, “making things easier for everyone,” says colleague Sara de Paiso. He knew how to talk to patients and was in tune with the stress levels of others. “We were very busy and it was’I buy you lunch, I buy dinner for you, I buy Bob for you.'”

About 35 days have passed since Disneyland closed the gate, Josh said in his post. A photo of Josh — A photo of the Sleeping Beauty castle surrounded by Tabebuia flowers, or Get attention The Little Mermaid Sweater — and Cornie Joke loved him to thousands of followers Instagram.. “He had a way to catch magic,” says his friend Brandon Joseph. Like the memories of my childhood, photography was fun.

Josh’s last post was on June 10th, announcing that Disneyland will resume in July. At some point, the virus reached a nursing home, infecting 49 staff and 120 inhabitants, eventually killing 14 people. About 41% of deaths from coronaviruses in the United States are associated with nursing homes where frail people live in the neighborhood. according to To New York Times.

His health deteriorated after being tested for viruses on June 12. On June 15, he sent a message to Joseph that he couldn’t breathe completely without feeling a knife stuck in his chest. On June 20, he texted that he was in the hospital and that he had a particularly bad case.

The last time Josh had a conversation with his family before using the ventilator was June 21st. “In our last video hangout, I was quarantined in Anaheim, quarantined, my parents were at home,” Jasmine says. It was Father’s Day, and “I remembered weeping because this was the reality of our family.”

Josh’s family was not allowed to visit him at the hospital and he died on July 6.

Coincidentally, Josh, like his grandparents, was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, in the same graveyard as Walt Disney.

Before the funeral, Jasmine headed to Disney’s tomb, she says. “I am,” Hi, Walt. I hope that my brother and you have found each other. “Was like.”

Every night after he died, Jasmine saw the spectacular sunset in Southern California, the pinks and yellows that Josh kept returning in his photos. “And every time I feel like he’s with me, I look at the sky, sometimes I start talking to it, and I feel like I’m talking to my brother, and he It feels like drawing a beautiful sky.”

Alastair Gee is a reporter at Parents..

Melissa Bailey, Eli Cahan, Shoshana Dubnow, and Anna Sirianni contributed to this report. This story is “Lost at the forefrontA project in progress Parents And Kaiser Health News (KHN) It aims to document the lives of US healthcare workers who died of COVID-19 and to investigate why many are victims of the disease. If you have colleagues or loved ones, let us know. Share their story..