How the coronavirus killed a Turlock nursing home patient: Family recounts last days
Maria Lopez was supposed to regain her strength for an upcoming surgery by staying at the Turlock Nursing and Rehabilitation Center for two weeks.
Instead, she caught the coronavirus and died on April 22, her family said, the same day Stanislaus County began contact tracing for the nursing home cases. More than 130 residents and staff members have tested positive for the virus since then, and Nonnette Garcia said she believes her grandmother was the first of 11 people to die in the outbreak tied to the facility.
As they prepared for her funeral last week, Lopez’s family described the final hours of the 82-year-old’s life, marked by her quick deterioration and the lack of prior updates from center personnel.
The first call came in after 10 p.m. April 20, Garcia said, while she worked the overnight shift at a Turlock Walmart. Garcia couldn’t answer, but the Turlock center left a message explaining staff transferred Lopez to Emanuel Medical Center because her blood pressure dropped. A nurse called Garcia again at 6:30 a.m., but she was still stocking the shelves.
Garcia called the center back about an hour later, then dialed the hospital, where a nurse told her Lopez had pneumonia and acute respiratory failure, but not the flu. To see if the Newman grandmother possibly contracted COVID-19, the nurse said staff tested her for the disease caused by the virus.
Family criticizes Turlock nursing home communication
The developments took Garcia by surprise because the last time she talked with the center and asked what Lopez’s treatment involved, staff explained how they were helping Lopez do exercises and maintain weight. The center on East Tuolumne Road did not notify her of any gradual health decline, she said.
“They didn’t communicate at all,” said Garcia, 37. “Only to the point where I had to ask or to the point where grandma was already taken to the hospital. They should’ve informed us before, but they didn’t.”
Covenant Care, the parent company of the Turlock facility, declined to answer questions about Lopez’s care and how staff updated her family. In an email, a spokesperson referred the Bee to the facility’s website for all comments on the outbreak.
Initially, after Lopez entered the facility on April 5, Garcia said her grandmother was supposed to leave on April 20 to get stent surgery for congenital heart failure. Garcia said the Turlock center advised her to wait because of the pandemic and until Lopez regained more strength, however.
Yet around 5:30 p.m. April 21, a hospital nurse told Garcia that Lopez tested positive for COVID-19. In the middle of the night, Garcia said she received an update that her grandmother’s body was shutting down and CPR wouldn’t help. By 7 a.m. April 22, Lopez died.
Son alleges lack of coronavirus precautions
Two hours later, the news reached Lopez’s only son, Clemente Lopez, an independent trucker who was driving a delivery to Portland, Oregon. His boss allowed him to turn around and go home.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Lopez, 57. “Two days ago she talked with me on the phone from her room. My brain didn’t accept it.”
His mother sounded drowsy and incoherent over the phone on April 20, Lopez said, but he didn’t expect her to die so quickly. Three days before her death, he stood outside the Turlock Nursing and Rehabilitation Center to inquire whether he needed to look for a long-term care facility that could take care of his mother.
While talking to a nurse and noting the “no visitors” sign, Lopez said seeing an employee enter the center without a mask concerned him. Lopez said his mother living with four roommates didn’t seem conducive to social distancing or outbreak prevention, either.
“Their precautions weren’t there,” Lopez said.
His mother tested negative for COVID-19 before she entered the Turlock center, Lopez said, so he suspects she contracted it there. The day she tested positive, Garcia said public health officials called her grandmother to ask how long she stayed at the facility, but she couldn’t talk in the hospital. Garcia said officials ended up interviewing her a couple of days later.
Contact tracing for the nursing home began on April 22, when public health officials were notified two staff tested positive for COVID-19 said Royjindar Singh, spokesman for the Stanislaus County Office of Emergency Services. After finding infected people, contact investigators try to contain outbreaks of the contagious disease by asking them with whom they had close contact within two days of the symptoms.
The county public health officer and Health Services Agency could not confirm whether staff interviewed Garcia about Lopez’s death, however.
“They can’t release any information about who medical health talks to and about what during contract tracing or any medical investigation,” Singh said in a text.
As Clemente Lopez prepared for his mother’s funeral, he said legal action against the facility wasn’t on his mind. When he talked to the Bee on Tuesday, two days before the May 7 funeral, he noted only 10 people are allowed to attend the burial of his mother’s cremated remains.
Still, Garcia wonders if her grandmother’s death was preventable.
“There should be justice because it’s not just my grandma,” Garcia said. “There’s other people’s families in there. They (the facility) should be held accountable.”
This story was originally published May 10, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
