By Alexandra Berzon, Shalini Ramachandran and Coulter Jones
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration faced one of
the biggest workplace-safety challenges in its 50-year history when
the coronavirus struck.
It didn't meet the moment.
Instead of thoroughly investigating complaints of unsafe
practices at workplaces, the federal agency and state OSHA agencies
it oversees often took limited steps, OSHA records and state health
data show, leaving workers more vulnerable to workplace
outbreaks.
When Kentucky warehouse employees complained that masks weren't
being worn at their site, when a group representing Illinois
packaging workers asked if OSHA would enforce social distancing and
when workers at a poultry plant said it wasn't responding to a
disease outbreak, the federal agency or a state counterpart took
little action as infections at the sites increased, according to
interviews, OSHA documents and health department records.
OSHA's mandate, spelled out in a 1970 law, is to help ensure
safe and healthy working conditions, by setting workplace standards
and enforcing them.
But the agency's rules are largely designed to minimize
chemical-exposure risks and injuries such as falls and electric
shock -- for the most part, problems that are readily identifiable
and correctable. It has struggled to address the altogether
different hazard of the coronavirus: invisible, lacking a sure
corrective and permeating blurred lines between workplace and the
world outside.
Separate agencies have roles in administering OSHA's mission,
and they must be as effective as the federal government. Federal
OSHA, which regulates workplaces in 29 states, sets standards for
state agencies elsewhere.
Federal OSHA said when the virus struck that it had rules in
place to protect workers. Yet some state agencies took an opposite
position -- that there were no rules to enforce to address many
Covid-19 concerns. Other state agencies created rules of their
own.
Workers flooded state and federal OSHA agencies with complaints
alleging their workplaces weren't safe. On the federal level,
OSHA's compliance-officer staff had declined in recent years.
Managers needed to limit the officers' exposure to Covid-19.
Compounding the challenge early on were shortages of masks and
shifting guidance from authorities about who needed to wear them,
in the face of a poorly understood threat.
The Wall Street Journal identified more than 1,000 worker deaths
from Covid-19 that circumstances suggest were linked to workplace
transmission of the virus but that were never investigated by an
OSHA agency, as of early February. Many hadn't been reported by
employers. The difficulty of determining when a Covid-19 death
should be deemed work-related was one of the challenges facing OSHA
during the pandemic.
It can't be known whether different actions by regulators or
others could have prevented any specific worker death from
Covid-19. A virus in the workplace isn't a hazard easily fixed,
like a wobbly scaffold. But some health and safety experts argue
that, especially last spring, OSHA missed repeated chances to
ensure that employers did all they could to minimize risk to
essential workers, those who must be on site producing goods or
delivering services.
"The pandemic has exposed OSHA's great weaknesses," said David
Michaels, the OSHA director in the Obama administration. "Workers
have never been so threatened by a hazard as they have by the
coronavirus."
A report dated last week by the U.S. Department of Labor's
Office of the Inspector General said that a lack of OSHA on-site
inspections remained a problem during the pandemic, and that it was
particularly problematic that OSHA hadn't been tracking which
inspections were remote and which were on-site. "With most OSHA
inspections done remotely during the pandemic, workplace hazards
may go unidentified and abated longer, leaving employees
vulnerable," the audit found.
In a response included in the report, OSHA said it would begin
tracking its remote inspections and implement other recommendations
raised by the audit.
James Frederick, the acting head of OSHA, said in response to
questions the agency is working with the inspector general's office
to improve its ability to protect workers from exposure to Covid-19
and advocate for those hit hardest by the pandemic.
It has always made clear the pandemic falls within its scope:
"Eliminating hazards from COVID-19 remains a top priority for
OSHA," the federal agency said in a May 2020 note to staff.
OSHA took the position last year that it was doing effective
virus-risk enforcement, pointing to the federal agency's citations
of employers after 263 virus-related inspections resulting in $3.5
million in fines.
President Biden has issued an executive order that asks OSHA to
consider setting a new, emergency standard to address Covid-19, a
step the federal agency under the previous administration declined
to take.
The 1970 law that created OSHA says employers are responsible
for providing employees with a workplace free of recognized
hazards.
OSHA's job is enforcing that obligation. To do that, federal
OSHA has long had a policy of responding to virtually all
complaints received, whether from workers or their representatives,
sometimes by inspecting workplaces.
OSHA's internal manual tells its officers to investigate all
fatalities that result from an injury or illness caused by a work
hazard, to determine the cause and whether there were any
violations by the employer. Agencies typically do this by
inspecting the workplaces to make sure they pose no risk to other
workers.
OSHA agencies received 72% more complaints from February 2020
through January 2021 than in the year-earlier 12 months, agency
data show. That came to nearly 93,000 complaints, about 57,000 of
them related to the coronavirus.
The agencies performed workplace inspections after far fewer
complaints than usual: 12%, versus 32% in the preceding 12 months,
according to OSHA records. They inspected workplaces after less
than 6% of the complaints that were related to Covid-19. Even
complaints unrelated to Covid-19 led to inspections less frequently
in the latest 12 months than in the preceding period.
Federal OSHA's staff of compliance officers stood at 944 in
January 2020, down from 1,106 in 2010. An official told Congress
last year OSHA was trying to hire more, but doing so wasn't easy.
Mr. Frederick said the total now is 894. The agency has long been
viewed as a less forceful regulator than some other agencies, with
limits on fines it can impose and a lengthy review process for new
regulations.
To assess OSHA agencies' performance in the pandemic, the
Journal examined inspection and complaint documents from federal
and state OSHAs, as well as disease-outbreak data from state and
local departments of health and data on nursing-home staff deaths
from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS. The
Journal catalogued thousands of worker deaths, scouring local news
reports and obituaries, and interviewed family members and
co-workers of those who died.
To gauge whether worker deaths that weren't reported to OSHA
might have been work-related, meriting a report, the Journal
applied OSHA's guidelines. It also checked whether deaths occurred
during Covid-19 outbreaks, as confirmed by local or state health
departments, at the workplaces.
For a time last spring, OSHA told most employers they didn't
need to try to determine whether a worker death from Covid-19 was
work-related. OSHA agencies typically use government records and
media reports to identify unreported worker fatalities, but during
the pandemic, they haven't always closely monitored media death
reports or data such as nursing-home fatality totals from CMS,
according to government records.
By looking at Covid-19 figures in five states and nursing-home
data from CMS, the Journal identified more than 500 Covid-19
outbreaks involving some 6,000 infections at workplaces where
employees had earlier complained to OSHA of unsafe conditions.
The Journal also found 180 worker deaths from Covid-19 that
occurred four weeks or more after complaints to OSHA agencies that
the agencies didn't investigate beyond corresponding with
employers.
Workplace safety agencies slightly increased their inspection
rates for Covid-19-related complaints after the early pandemic
months of March and April but were still below levels of general
complaint inspections, according to the Journal's analysis. Federal
OSHA didn't make substantial changes to its approach after it laid
out its enforcement protocols and priorities in April and revised
them in May. Some state OSHA agencies began enforcing governors'
safety requirements for workplaces. Several other states issued
emergency OSHA standards.
The Journal's numbers are likely to substantially understate
workplace-related employee deaths from Covid-19. Probable infection
sources have been publicly identified for just a small fraction of
what Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show as 90,000
people of working age who have died of the disease.
Told of the Journal's findings in December, Loren Sweatt, then
acting head of OSHA, said in a statement: "By pulling isolated
alleged incidents out of context from the thousands of inspections
conducted by OSHA, these criticisms unfairly disparage the work of
dedicated OSHA inspectors across the country who have now issued
nearly 300 COVID citations and kept hundreds of thousands of
workers safe on the job."
The new acting director, Mr. Frederick, said the agency was
working on potential changes in its enforcement efforts to "better
protect workers and ensure the safety of its compliance
officers."
In an example of OSHA agencies' conflicting approaches, Utah's
state agency responded to many coronavirus-related complaints by
telling complainants the matter was outside its jurisdiction and
declining even to inform employers of the concern, according to
state officials and documents viewed by the Journal.
Asked about this, a spokesman for Utah's state OSHA said it felt
there were no Covid-19 rules for it to enforce until November, when
it created its own emergency administrative rule, requiring
mask-wearing for all employees.
Its prior no-rules stance conflicted with federal OSHA's
position that there were rules in place to address Covid-19.
Similarly, when an Illinois worker-advocacy group asked OSHA
last spring about safety worries at a firm that packages soaps, a
local director of OSHA replied that although it had received
complaints of employers not following CDC guidelines, it couldn't
enforce these because they weren't formal rules. The best OSHA
could do was send employers an advisory letter, the director said
in an email to the advocacy group, the Chicago Workers
Collaborative.
OSHA later received two complaints from others about the
soap-packaging plant, in Waukegan, Ill., alleging it ignored social
distancing and cleaning guidelines, according to documents viewed
by the Journal. In response to an April complaint, the local OSHA
director told the employer, Visual Pak Cos., that OSHA wouldn't
conduct an on-site inspection, but the company should undertake one
on its own.
Visual Pak in early May informed OSHA it was providing personal
protective equipment, taking workers' temperatures and doing
extensive sanitation, according to correspondence viewed by the
Journal. After it provided the names of disinfectants used, records
of the case show, the agency closed the complaint.
The company didn't mention that two workers, 59-year-old Reyna
Salgado and 40-year-old Javier Escobedo, had just died during a
Covid-19 outbreak at the workplace, according to documents viewed
by the Journal and interviews with family members. State records
show at least 47 workers tested positive during the outbreak,
according to documents obtained by the Documenting Covid-19 project
from Brown Institute for Media Innovation, a program of Columbia
University and Stanford University.
Visual Pak declined to comment on the outbreak or to why it
didn't report the deaths to OSHA, nor would it say how many people
work at the plant. The company described worker safety as its top
priority and said its efforts include social distancing and
requiring employees to stay home if they feel unwell.
In Kentucky, the state Labor Cabinet, which houses Kentucky's
Occupational Safety and Health Program, received eight complaints
by the end of March about United Parcel Service's Worldport
distribution hub in Louisville. Some alleged a lack of sanitizer,
masks or effective distancing in places including shuttle
buses.
The Kentucky Labor Cabinet didn't take immediate action on the
complaints, according to information provided by Cabinet officials.
By mid-April, two employees who worked at the site had died of
Covid-19.
The spokeswoman said the March complaints weren't formal OSHA
complaints because they had been filed to the Labor Cabinet's
"KYSafer" portal, a hotline set up in the pandemic.
UPS didn't report either death as a work-related fatality. Asked
why, a spokesman said, "There is no way to know where someone was
actually infected."
OSHA took note of that problem in April and put out guidance
saying that for employers not involved in health care or emergency
services, the agency wouldn't enforce its normal requirement that
companies determine whether the death of a worker was work-related.
Instead, they needed to make this determination only if there was
objective evidence a Covid-19 case might be work-related.
However, new OSHA guidance effective May 26 said all employers
should seek to determine whether any employee who died of Covid-19
had caught it at work. The new guidance said Covid-19 cases that
arose during an outbreak among employees working together or in
close contact with the public should likely be considered
work-related.
The essential workers in jobs such as warehouse work tend to be
lower income, and Black and Latino employees are highly represented
in their ranks relative to the population as a whole, studies by
health agencies show.
One UPS Worldport worker who died in April was Howard Hopkins,
55. His sister, Michelle Hopkins, and his roommate, Tracey Taylor,
said they believed he caught the virus on the job because he had
little activity outside of work, and he had fretted about a lack of
mask wearing at UPS and about crowded shuttle buses.
At the time, UPS let workers forgo masks if they signed waivers.
The CDC on April 3 had urged everyone to wear masks in public,
changing a prior recommendation of masks primarily for a smaller
group, such as health-care workers and people with symptoms.
The other UPS worker's death appeared in news reports and was
confirmed by the state's governor during a briefing. Mr. Hopkins'
union issued a statement about a member's death without naming Mr.
Hopkins.
Kentucky OSH said it investigates worker deaths unreported by
employers if it learns of them through the media or referrals from
other agencies. In this case, it didn't look into either UPS death
because it wasn't made aware of them, said the Labor Cabinet
spokeswoman.
Kentucky OSH officials inspected the UPS Worldport site at the
end of April, acting as agents of public health, according to the
spokeswoman. By then, there had been about 50 complaints about the
workplace to the Kentucky Labor Cabinet, records show.
In mid-May, Kentucky OSH personnel sent UPS a notice of
deficiency about mask wearing and a lack of adequate distancing.
The agency recommended remedies, including requiring that any
waiver of mask rules be signed by a health professional. UPS told
OSHA it would take corrective steps, including better distancing on
shuttles. Kentucky OSH issued no citation, although it opened a
formal inspection of the work site the next month.
In August, Kentucky OSH received correspondence alleging a lack
of proper mask wearing among many people at the UPS site. This
time, the agency didn't notify the employer, closing the complaint
without follow-up.
Kentucky OSH didn't consider this a valid complaint based on
state law, according to the spokeswoman for the Kentucky Labor
Cabinet. She said the letter had been forwarded by the U.S.
Department of Labor, and it addressed union issues in addition to
Covid-19 matters, which the agency believed it had already
addressed.
After the Journal provided information about the Worldport
situation and April deaths, Kentucky OSH opened investigations into
the fatalities in December, Labor Cabinet officials said.
The agency later cited UPS for "failing to protect employees
from exposure to Covid-19," culminating a prior investigation,
according to a Labor Cabinet spokesman.
He said UPS is contesting the case and in the meantime doesn't
have to abate the violations. The fines total $10,450, records
show.
A spokesman for UPS declined to comment on the citations but
said the company "has worked hard throughout the pandemic to
provide for the safety of our employees and to comply with state,
local and federal Covid-19 safety rules, as well as to ensure our
people understand their personal obligations to the law and each
other's well-being." UPS said it rolled out extensive safety
measures, including requiring mask-wearing after Kentucky's
governor mandated that in May.
At the Worldport site, 838 members of the 11,600-strong
workforce have been infected since the start of the pandemic last
year, based on UPS's reports to Louisville's health department as
of early February. A company representative said its rates are in
line with the community's.
The Kentucky Labor Cabinet said that workplace-safety officials
have "diligently worked to carry out their permanent assigned
roles," plus new responsibilities as agents of public health, using
technology as much as possible and safely conducting on-site
inspections when warranted.
Although many OSHA rules were designed to prevent injuries, the
agency worked on drafting infectious-disease rules for health-care
facilities after the H1N1 flu of 2009. It didn't complete the
process of formalizing them and they didn't go into effect.
Besides specific rules, OSHA has a broad principle that
workplaces must be hazard-free, known as the General Duty
clause.
It isn't often invoked. After a complaint to the North Carolina
Occupational Safety and Health Division on April 6 alleged that a
poultry plant was exposing workers to the coronavirus, the
regulators wrote to the plant operator but said: "Since the
allegation does not fall under an OSHA standard or the General Duty
clause, a written response to this letter is not required."
The operator, Seaboard Corp.'s Butterball LLC, did respond, with
a note saying it was committed to safety and was considering
supplying masks and erecting barriers at the 3,500-worker facility,
in Mount Olive, N.C.
Two more complaints came in to North Carolina's workplace safety
agency. One on April 17 said there were 17 Covid-19 cases at the
plant and there was "a concern that the virus is spreading due to
employees working very close to each other."
That same day, the Duplin County, N.C., health-services director
told the state health department "we are afraid that this plant is
going to explode with positive cases within the next 4-7 days,"
according to an email obtained by the Documenting Covid-19
project.
The North Carolina OSH Division again wrote to Butterball,
reiterating that the agency had no coronavirus-related standard to
enforce and again asking the company to investigate, but not
requiring any response.
The Division said it follows federal OSHA-mandated protocols for
responding to complaints. Federal OSHA's standard letter, however,
says employers should be asked to report the result of their
internal investigations. It also says that a number of OSHA rules
might apply to Covid-19 hazards.
By the end of April, Covid-19 cases at the poultry plant
numbered 80, according to county health documents. The county and
the company jointly signed an agreement outlining safety
measures.
In May, William Moore, a 29-year-old worker at the plant, began
to feel sick. After about a week, he died of Covid-19. Butterball
didn't report his death to North Carolina OSH. A spokeswoman for
the company said it didn't believe he had contracted the virus at
work.
Mr. Moore's family members said he avoided nearly all activities
and social contact except traveling to and from the Butterball
plant.
Butterball said its voluntary protocols at the time "were
consistent with those of other manufacturers, evolving CDC and OSHA
guidance and available" protective equipment. It said its measures
included company-provided masks, physical barriers on production
lines and a workspace reconfigured for distancing. It said it has a
thorough contact-tracing system and is committed to best practices
to reduce risks.
In some instances, when OSHA learned of worker deaths that
employers hadn't reported, it asked the employers to investigate
and then accepted their conclusions without doing a fatality
investigation, which typically entails interviewing family and
co-workers and inspecting work sites.
At a Walmart Inc. store in Aurora, Colo., cashier Sandra Kunz,
72, and security guard Lupe Aguilar, 69, died within days of each
other in April, deaths that Walmart didn't report to OSHA.
Local news publicized their deaths. OSHA sent Walmart a letter
referencing a death and requested a response but didn't open
fatality investigations.
In a more than 300-page reply, Walmart told OSHA about its
procedures to provide a safe work environment and provided
information about Ms. Kunz, a company spokesman said. He said
Walmart concluded there was no evidence Ms. Kunz had contracted the
virus at work, a company spokesman said.
Family members said Ms. Kunz worried that Walmart hadn't
provided masks or guidance on how to handle coughing customers.
They said she hadn't been informed about any co-workers falling
ill. Eighteen employees became infected as part of the outbreak,
Colorado's health department said.
Based on Walmart's response, OSHA closed the case with no
citation of the employer.
As for Mr. Aguilar, Walmart said it didn't report his death
because he wasn't an employee but a contract worker. The company
pointed OSHA to his direct employer, Brosnan Risk Consultants,
which said in a statement it believed neither company was obligated
to report his death at that time.
An OSHA representative said companies are supposed to report any
work-related death of a person they supervise even if the person
isn't one of their employees.
Gia Aguilar, Mr. Aguilar's wife, said she believes he caught the
virus on the job because he wasn't venturing out beyond work.
Ms. Kunz died April 20. Walmart said it began providing masks to
employees and mandating their use that day and quickly took other
safety steps, such as social-distancing measures.
At least 619 Walmart staffers in Colorado have contracted
Covid-19, in 38 workplace outbreaks, according to the state health
department.
Walmart declined to comment specifically on its Colorado worker
infections, but it said that "the health of our associates tends to
track the health of the country as a whole."
--Graphics by Joel Eastwood--Alejandro Lazo, Nora Eckert and
Lisa Schwartz contributed to this article.
Endnotes
The people pictured at the top of this article are a handful of
the workers who have died of Covid-19. All either died following
complaints to OSHA about their workplaces or their deaths went
uninvestigated when employers didn't report them to OSHA agencies
-- because, according to most of the employers, they didn't think
the deaths were work-related. In lawsuits and interviews, loved
ones of some of the deceased said they believed their family
members caught the coronavirus at work.
Lupe Aguilar, 69, was working as a security guard at a Walmart
in Aurora, Colo., when he contracted the virus. He was an avid
photographer who died on April 17 after struggling on a ventilator.
"I know in my heart that he heard me tell him how much I loved him
one last time," said his wife, Gia Aguilar. PHOTO: GIA AGUILAR
Jose Andrade-Garcia, with daughter Maria Andrade, was a
61-year-old worker at a JBS meat-processing plant in Marshalltown,
Iowa, who died May 15. "He was the type of person who would pretty
much do everything for his kids," his daughter said. PHOTO: ANDRADE
FAMILY
Enock Benjamin, 70, a meat plant worker for JBS in Souderton,
Pa., died on April 3. Mr. Benjamin was a union steward whom
colleagues called a "champion of the people," according to a
lawsuit later filed by his family.
Barbara Birchenough, 65, a nurse at Clara Maass Medical Center
in Belleville, N.J., was hospitalized about a week before she
planned to retire, said daughter Kristin Birchenough Carbone. Ms.
Birchenough died on April 15. PHOTO: KRISTIN BIRCHENOUGH
CARBONE
Javier Escobedo, 40, worked at soap packager Visual Pak in
Waukegan, Ill. He died on May 3. "He was always funny, always
trying to make everyone smile," sister Yadira Escobedo said. PHOTO:
ESCOBEDO FAMILY
Robert Fentress, 44, a marine electrician for General Dynamics
at a shipyard in Norfolk, Va., died on April 9. "He was the rock of
the family," sister Toshiba Fentress said. PHOTO: JAY ASKEW
Glenmar Gabriel, 37, with girlfriend Evelyn Guevarra, was a ramp
worker for American Airlines' Envoy carrier in Fort Worth, Texas.
He died on April 5. PHOTO: EVELYN GUEVARRA
Pwar Gay, 46, worked as a meat cutter at a Tyson Foods
meat-packing plant in Amarillo, Texas. She died on May 8. PHOTO:
GAY FAMILY
Gerardo Gutierrez, 70, was a deli worker at a Publix store in
Miami Beach who died on April 28. PHOTO: GUTIERREZ FAMILY
Sandra Kunz, 72, died of Covid on April 20, two days after her
husband, Gus Kunz. Her family had pressed her to retire from her
job as a Walmart cashier in Aurora, Colo., when the pandemic broke
out, but she didn't want to. "I think that was a source of pride
for her, to be able to work at Walmart," said Jennifer Cochran, her
niece. PHOTO: JENNIFER COCHRAN
Regina Lim Lee, left, with her sister and mother, who also died
of Covid-19, was a 58-year-old cruise agent at Costco in Issaquah,
Wash., who died on March 16. PHOTO: LEE FAMILY
Kipp Lyons, left, was a 59-year-old activities coordinator at
Ohio Living Rockynol nursing home in Akron who died on April 22.
"She was dedicated to helping Alzheimer's and dementia patients get
a little bit of themselves back," said her husband, Patrick Lyons.
PHOTO: LYONS FAMILY
James McKay, 75, was a grocery clerk at a King Soopers store in
Denver who died on May 23. PHOTO: MCKAY FAMILY
William Moore, with fiancée Trizetta Pone, worked at a
Butterball poultry plant in Mount Olive, N.C., and died May 26 at
age 29. He played drums at church every Sunday and loved to sing
and fish, family members said. "Everybody loved him," said Ms.
Pone. PHOTO: TRIZETTA PONE
Randy Narvaez, seen with sister Nicole Trujillo, was a
51-year-old worker at the King Soopers grocery chain in Denver. He
died on May 17. PHOTO: NARVAEZ FAMILY
Clara Newkirk, a 70-year-old truck-control agent at FedEx in
Newark, died on April 22. She had worked there for 25 years and
colleagues knew her as Mama Clara, "a mother to all those around
her," said daughter Stephanie Newkirk. PHOTO: STEPHANIE NEWKIRK
Catherine Pace, 65, a paint-shop worker at Fiat Chrysler in
Warren, Mich., died on March 27. "She was this bright, bubbly
being, a little bitty woman [who] baked a sour cream pound cake
everyone just raved over, " said daughter Tonya Pace. PHOTO:
MICHAEL MILLS PHOTOGRAPHY
Janine Paiste-Ponder, 59, a nurse at Alta Bates Summit Medical
Center in Oakland, Calif., died on July 17. "My mom would be that
go-to person," taking extra shifts when others called out sick,
said daughter Dominique Paiste-Ponder. PHOTO: PAISTE-PONDER
FAMILY
Gonzalo Peralta, 55, seen with his son, Roberto, and daughter
Lyrissa, worked at Tyson Foods in Emporia, Kan. He played in the
local soccer league and stepped up to fill in for colleagues as
they fell sick with Covid-19, said his wife, Chrysanne Peralta. He
died on June 20, his son's birthday. PHOTO: PERALTA FAMILY
Howard Rogers was a 55-year-old maintenance worker for
CTtransit, a service of the Connecticut Department of
Transportation. He died on May 14. "Howard was my everything," said
his wife, Denise Rogers. "What is a person supposed to do when the
love of your life for over 20 years isn't here anymore?" PHOTO:
DENISE ROGERS
Alfred Salvatore, 47, with his daughters and his wife, Natalie
Salvatore, was a service technician for Verizon in Feltonville,
Pa., who died on April 24. Ms. Salvatore said he had helped service
a nursing home's cable connection before he fell ill. PHOTO:
SALVATORE FAMILY
Shawna Snyder, 40, a nurse at Banner Health's hospital in
Tucson, Ariz., was a Navy veteran who was proud of her Navajo
heritage. She died July 3 after weeks on a ventilator, leaving
behind four children, the youngest ages 2 and 3. PHOTO: FAMILY OF
SHAWNA SNYDER
Alan Twofoot, 51, a payroll technician at the Department of
Veterans Affairs in Bedford, Mass., died on May 12. PHOTO: TIFFANY
TWOFOOT
Elizabeth Wiles, left, with son Angelo, was a 69-year-old
housekeeper at Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center in
Beaver, Pa., who died on May 10. PHOTO: WILES FAMILY
Sue Williams-Ward, 68, was a home health aide at Together We Can
in Indianapolis. She fell ill after her colleague on the prior
shift also fell sick, said her husband, Royal Davis, and she died
on May 2. "She was a compassionate person, a giving person, always
there to help somebody else," Mr. Davis said. PHOTO: FAMILY OF MS.
WILLIAMS-WARD
Write to Alexandra Berzon at alexandra.berzon@wsj.com, Shalini
Ramachandran at shalini.ramachandran@wsj.com and Coulter Jones at
Coulter.Jones@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 04, 2021 11:40 ET (16:40 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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