17 March 2021: Safety at New Jersey Nursing Homes Compromised

Family of Nurse Who Died of COVID at Troubled NJ Nursing Home Gets Validation

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and his administration copied many of the policies that created New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's multiple nursing home scandals. This article describes the story of Edgar Alberto, a nurse at at Andover, New Jersey nursing home who had no idea the patients he was treating has been transferred from hospitals where they had been treated for COVID-19. It also shares the situation of short supplies of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for nursing home staff, which contributed to his exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and ultimately to his death from COVID-19.

Alberto's widow, Mary Jane Mustera, said her husband and the other employees were taking care of the patients, but "they didn't know who was a COVID patient." She said her husband was also worried about inadequate PPE.

"The protection that he needs, they need, they didn't give it," Mustera said an interview with the I-Team.

Alberto, who had an 11-year-old son, died in the hospital the same week that the gruesome discovery was made, with the bodies of several patients found stacked in the makeshift morgue at the facility. His widow couldn't process what had happened to him.

The validation mentioned in the headline comes from the federal government's confirmation of the conditions that contributed to Alberto's death.

State and federal investigations in Spring 2020 found lases in inspection control and a systemic failure in basic protocols. But a few weeks ago, Mustera got a specific letter from OSHA about her husband's death. It noted breakdowns in required N-95 mask protections, and labeled the violations as "serious."

For the failures, Andover was penalized more than $22,000, which the management agreed to pay.

"If only they give him the protection ... he'd still be alive," Mustera said.

"All the investigations that I've done representing people, there is an indication not only that OSHA looked into a specific death, but there were findings as to the violations that caused and led to someone's death," said the family's attorney Juan Fernandez.

For more background, see Political Calculations' analysis of What Happened in New Jersey's Nursing Homes, which was posted on May 21, 2020.