A California hospital is dealing with a major outbreak of COVID-19 that has left 44 staff members infected and one dead — and officials believe it all started after an employee wore an inflatable Christmas tree costume around the emergency room to spread holiday cheer.
On Christmas Day, one employee “briefly” wore the air-powered costume while walking around the emergency room at Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center, the hospital’s spokesperson, Irene Chavez, said in a statement, The New York Times reported. By Dec. 27, staff members started testing positive for COVID-19, and as of Jan. 4 a total of 44 employees who worked in the ER on Christmas Day have tested positive.
One staffer, a registration clerk who worked in the emergency department that day, has now died from COVID-19. Coworkers told KNTV that she was an “absolutely wonderful woman.”
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Hospital officials say that the inflatable costume — which uses an internal fan to pull air into the suit is “a likely source” of the outbreak, which they are currently investigating. The hospital has since banned inflatable costumes.
“Any exposure, if it occurred, would have been completely innocent, and quite accidental, as the individual had no COVID symptoms and only sought to lift the spirits of those around them during what is a very stressful time,” Chavez said.
Some of the infected hospital workers had received their first dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine a few days before Christmas, but the outbreak was too soon after their inoculations for the vaccine to have provided immunity.
Kaiser Permanente San Jose said that they are deep cleaning the hospital and have contacted any patients who came into the ER on Christmas Day to let them know they may have been exposed to COVID-19.
California is currently dealing with one of the largest COVID surges in the country. On Jan. 2, the state recorded 52,197 new cases, the second-most in the state of the entire pandemic, the Times reported. California hospitals have said for weeks that they are overwhelmed with patients, and currently have 21,510 people hospitalized with the virus. Since March, more than 2,433,800 people in California have tested positive for COVID-19 and at least 26,635 have died.
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