In the Covid-19 death of a hospital food worker, a microcosm of the pandemic
This is one in a series of reports from hospitals responding to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The hospital’s first employee to die of Covid-19 was a kitchen worker named Marie Deus. She was 65, and a longtime germophobe. Years before the pandemic, years before the new coronavirus was known to exist, she always kept a stash of masks and Purell in her bag. She was never without paper towels, to shield her hands from whatever unseen dangers lurked on doorknobs, on handholds in the bus. She’d come home from the grocery store with Lysol, Pine-Sol, ammonia, Clorox. She didn’t just like rooms tidy; she wanted them spotless and disinfected.
