Nearly 1,200 hospital staff throughout Long Island have contracted the coronavirus, according to a new survey, which does not include data from eight other hospitals in Nassau and Suffolk.
A total of 13 hospitals throughout the island provided Newsday with the numbers of their employees who have tested positive for the virus, totaling 1,175. The publication estimated “well over 1,200” contracted the virus throughout Long Island, after eight hospitals including Good Samaritan and NYU-Winthrop declined to provide their respective figures.
A total of 648 employees in Nassau-based hospitals had tested positive for the coronavirus, the newspaper said.
Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park had 191, North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset had 170, Long Island Jewish Valley Stream had 72, Glen Cove Hospital had 57, Plainview Hospital had 55, Nassau University Medical Center had 53, and Syosset Hospital had 50, according to Newsday.
Efforts to reach other hospitals in the county for their respective figures were unavailing.
As of last Wednesday or Thursday, Stony Brook University Hospital had 220 employees test positive, the most in one facility on Long Island, the newspaper said.
Northwell Health chief spokesman Terry Lynam said 1,783 of Northwell’s 72,000 employees, some of whom are based in New York City, had tested positive for the coronavirus as of last Wednesday, April 8.
Lynam outlined the procedure that Northwell undertakes when an employee has tested positive for the virus and said its main priority is to keep their employees and patients safe and comfortable.
“When an employee tests positive, they go on a seven-day paid furlough,” Lynam said. “They can return once they go three consecutive days without a fever or any other symptoms.”
Though the demand for the procurement of personal protective equipment is high, Lynam said, Northwell’s hospitals remain adequately stocked — for now.
“We’re in pretty good shape with [personal protective equipment],” Lynam said. “We ask staffers to reuse the N95 masks for multiple days unless they have been soiled. Each day our hospitals collectively go through roughly 10,000 N95 masks. That gives you a sense of the demand right now.”
Michael Chacon, Long Island program representative for the state’s nurses association, told Newsday the reusing of personal protective equipment is a factor in nurses and other health care workers getting sick on the front lines.
“These infection control measures defy any standards that used to be put into place,” Chacon told Newsday. “You can’t walk in a shooting gallery without being hit by a stray bullet every once in a while.”
Yasmine Beausejour, a registered Nurse at Northwell’s Long Island Jewish Valley Stream and a representative of the New York State Nurses Association, spoke to Newsday about the sacrifices front line employees have made outside of their workplace environment.
“I’ve spoken to nurses who are not sleeping in the same room as their spouses for fear of contaminating,” Beausejour told Newsday. “This is the reality. When they say we’re making sacrifices, these are the sacrifices.”
Ron Gurrieri, president of Civil Service Employee Association Local 830, which represents many Nassau University Medical Center workers, said the hospital recently secured 20,000 surgical masks and 1,500 new N95 protective masks.
“As far as I know NUMC is doing everything it can to help the employees by giving them appropriate gear where they can get, when they have it, and making it available,” Gurrieri told Newsday.
