This is a long one....
I had a guest check in to my hotel for 14 days. The State of California Health Care Workers ( Sacramento) showed up as the one paying for the room.
When I spoke with her in the morning when she came down to get her To Go Breakfast... I asked what brought her to San Diego? The way the reservation was made it looked like she was from Sacramento... we though she was working for the state.
She informed me she had just gotten out of the hospital with Covid.
She did not want to take the chance of infecting her family, so she was quarantining. (At my hotel! ...taking the chance of infecting us!!!!!! peachy!!!) Her family was also quarantining at her home since they had been exposed by her.
Back story is that she is a social worker at a nursing facility in North San Diego County. I said I thought no one was allowed to visit or go into the facility except the staff, how did it get into the facility? She said, "That was true, but the population goes to the hospital, goes out for dialysis and other medical appointments so they are exposed at the hospitals and bring it back.
Intrigued to speak with someone who had actually had it, I took the opportunity to learn more.
I asked how she knew she had it, what were her first symptoms? She said first she got a bad headache, then the dry cough. Then the fever started. As it progressed it got very hard to breath, and she became very weak. She was never on a ventilator, so she had a milder case, but was hospitalized, so it was serious.
I said that I had heard someone say they were so tired it was hard to even chew food to eat, that it was too much effort. She said yes... absolutely no energy to do anything but try to breath, and she lost all smell and taste around the time the fever started. She said each day now she is getting stronger and feels better. She said she still has a cough, but they put her on albuterol and a strong cough suppressant. While we were speaking she did not cough. She had on a mask and so did I.
Ironically we are closing the hotel to tent for termites, so we had to ask the organization that booked her 14 day stay to move her to another hotel. (We found severe termite damage to the ends of the building while renovating. My owner had just committed to tenting instead of heat treating the rooms. Since we have so few guests, this is the best time to make sure the whole building is treated, not just the 8 rooms where we know there is damage.)
When I spoke to the booking organization, they said well she is probably at work, they were not sure they could reach her. I said, "No I she is still in the hotel." Like me, they thought they were booking a healthcare worker who was visiting from Sacramento to help at the hospitals... not and active covid patient.
So many thoughts about this:
We were not informed she was still considered contagious.
Since she is still considered contagious, she should have had us take her To Go Breakfast and put it outside her door so she was not it the elevator and common areas where other unsuspecting staff and guests were.
We have not been set up as a Covid hotel and have no special gear to put on to clean or service a covid room ( with light cleaning, removing trash, resupplying towels and amenities daily.) The protocol other hotels use is this "light touch cleaning" daily, and on the 4th day sheets are taken to the room with a large extra trash bag, the guest would change the sheets and put the used sheets in the plastic bag. The bag of dirty sheets is placed outside the door in the hall for hotel staff to recover and wash.
If this is how it is going all over the nation, we will never stop the spread, because they simply booked her in a hotel close to her home... not a hotel specifically set up to take quarantining patients. The State booking company, did not know she was an infected Healthcare Employee, they just knew she was a Healthcare Worker. (Not sure they can be informed of her covid status due to HIPPA laws to be honest.)
We do not have the Personal Protective supplies to wear to be in a room where there are active covid virus germs... (in California, only hospital staff are allowed the N95 masks, so that the general population will not hoard and cause more shortage of PPE for our first responders and hospital staff.)
She checked out around 10AM. That room will have to just sit dirty a month or so. I am not having any staff go in there. We had upgraded her to a mini suit since it was a 14 day stay... now I have lost that premium room.
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