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This story was updated at 2:55 p.m Friday.
A staffer of the Brattleboro Retreat — Vermont’s largest mental health facility with more than 850 workers — is thought to have coronavirus, triggering concern among others at Windham County’s largest employer.
“An employee of the Brattleboro Retreat is presumed positive for COVID-19,” spokesman Konstantin von Krusenstiern said Friday, “and is currently not working.”
The Retreat first announced in the morning the staffer had “tested positive,” then changed that diagnosis to “presumed positive” in the afternoon when administrators realized they couldn’t confirm whether an actual test did or didn’t take place.
Retreat admissions director Remy Magnon, addressing the issue in an email to the staffer’s colleagues, said everyone else was expected to work or face the loss of their jobs.
“I realize that if you interacted with this individual you may have been exposed to the virus,” Magnon wrote. “I know this possibility is frightening and stressful. I truly understand your anxiety, but we cannot turn back time. We can only look forward.”
“At this point, what can be done is to monitor your health and comply with precautions that will minimize the expansion of risk to other staff and patients,” Magnon continued. “Unless you become symptomatic i.e. dry cough and/or fever, you can work with a mask and regular temperature checks. If you develop a fever or respiratory symptoms or do not feel well you must immediately inform me and I will send you home and notify Employee Health for follow-up.”
“In the meantime, you are expected to work as scheduled,” Magnon concluded. “If you refuse to do so, your employment will be terminated. This is not what I want to see happen but we cannot continue operations at the Retreat if a critical mass of staff refuse to come to work when they are not actually sick. All healthcare workers are considered essential staff by the Retreat and the State of Vermont so please come to work as long as you are healthy and able to do so. The patients need you and your coworkers need you. If conditions change we will make whatever adjustments are warranted at that point in time.”
In a public statement Friday afternoon, von Krusenstiern said the Retreat wished the employee “a fast and full recovery” and offered appreciation for the rest of the staff.
“Essential healthcare workers on the front lines of the Coronavirus pandemic are understandably concerned about their exposure to the COVID-19 virus,” von Krusenstiern said. “The Retreat is closely following CDC infection prevention recommendations that have been adopted by hospitals across the country. The safety of our employees and the patients we serve remains at the forefront of our daily planning. We appreciate our staff for their courage as we rely on scientific facts to manage the unprecedented challenges that this pandemic has brought to our nation’s hospitals and the communities they serve.”
Earlier this week, the Retreat announced it would stop accepting out-of-state inpatients until further notice to help itself and surrounding hospitals reduce bed counts during the coronavirus crisis.
The private not-for-profit psychiatric and addiction treatment center is licensed for 149 beds, although it recently reduced its capacity to 93 and currently has 60 patients. The Retreat, which has yet to report a coronavirus case among patients but has one quarantined awaiting test results, is preparing space to serve as an isolation unit for people with both psychiatric and non-life-threatening symptoms. The patient’s test results have since come in negative.
“Each time we admit a patient who would otherwise be stuck in a hospital emergency department suffering from acute psychiatric distress, we free up valuable medical resources needed to combat COVID-19 in Vermont,” Retreat President Louis Josephson said.
The Retreat has provided more than half of the state’s inpatient psychiatric treatment beds and all of its youth treatment beds since Tropical Storm Irene flooded the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury in 2011. But it has been losing money and talked about possible closure earlier this year because it’s treating a high number of Medicaid patients whose public insurance pays less than private insurance.
The Retreat isn’t the only Windham County employer reporting an employee case of coronavirus this week. Southeast Vermont Transit has announced that one of its Current bus drivers tested positive after working the Brattleboro blue-line route March 16-19.
“The driver left work and quarantined starting the evening of March 19, three days before his/her symptoms appeared,” Southeast Vermont Transit CEO Randy Schoonmaker said in a statement. “The driver has been out for 14 days and is eligible to return to work pending a doctor’s release.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated on April 5 to include that the test results of the patient who had been quarantined came back negative.
