Essential care workers hold COVID remembrance event to honor those lost, call for action

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) —  Essential care workers gathered on the State House steps Tuesday afternoon for a COVID-19 five-year remembrance event to honor those lost to the pandemic and to call for more action.

On Tuesday, current and former workers from hospitals, nursing homes, and community health centers honored Rhode Island’s nearly 4,500 victims lost to the virus, writing their names on a remembrance board and holding photos and keepsakes of loved ones who passed.

Out of the 4,500 lives lost in Rhode Island, almost 2,000 lived in nursing homes, which SEIU 1199 said exposed the impacts of “chronic understaffing, poor infection controls, and poverty wages” in nursing homes.

“When the pandemic hit we went from low level crisis to a full blown catastrophe, and the bottom fell out. There were only four staff members and 30 COVID patients and many of our residents suffered and died. It was heartbreaking, and I felt I couldn’t do enough to save them,” Greenville Center Registered Nurse Stefania Silvestri said. 

Additionally, they honored the over 3,600 United States healthcare workers who passed away to COVID during the first year of the outbreak.

SEIU 1199 said essential workers at the remembrance did not only honor the memory of the victims lost, but also called on Governor McKee and the General Assembly to “support and invest in frontline staff and the healthcare system as a whole.” The union cited a new report released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute that said the potential cuts to Medicaid could “equal more than $242 million in cuts to Rhode Island.”