Coronavirus Anniversary Marked With ‘Message Of Hope’ At LIJ

NEW HYDE PARK, NY — Northwell Health frontline healthcare workers marked the anniversary of the first COVID-19 admission to Long Island Jewish Hospital with a message of hope as a mural dedicated to staff was unveiled on Thursday.

They stood in front of a 15-foot painting named “Frontline Warriors 2020” which features nameless masked healthcare workers in scrubs standing with giant superhero-like fists, their arms linked with a bright light shining behind them.

New York-based artist Sergio Barrale, who created the painting with Angela China, said the workers guard the “precious light of life behind them.”

“There is symbolism there: light is life,” Barrale told reporters. “For if there was no sun, there would be no life on earth. We cannot take anything with us when we go, so life must be the opposite of this notion. Life must be about giving while we are here.”

LIJ Executive Director Michael Goldberg said that despite the continued spread of infection today, the gathering contains a “message of hope as we near the end of the second wave here in New York,” he said, adding that there are now three vaccines available to back up the system’s health teams “in the fight against COVID-19.”

Northwell Health system’s first COVID-19 hospitalization was at Huntington Hospital on March 2, 2020. By April, the system had nearly 3,500 hospitalized cases in a single day and it seemed to workers like there was no end in sight, officials said.

The health system treated over 163,000 COVID-19 patients in the span of a year, while also losing 24 team members. To honor them, the Ralph A. Nappi Campus in New Hyde Park will be bathed in upward projecting lights between March 12 and 14, in a 9/11-inspired beacon. Staff will also pay tribute to them with “remembrance circles” and other events at Northwell facilities, including a town hall for its 75,000 employees, officials said.

Trailblazing nurse Sandra Lindsay, LIJ’s director of clinical care services, said that no education or experience could have prepared the staff for what they went through the past year.

“But my teammates were resilient; they came to work every day, put their heads down and got the work done,” said Lindsay of Port Washington. “They went home and came back the next day. We leaned on each other. We supported each other. We laughed together and cried together. And that is what got us through the worst of the pandemic.”

Michael Dowling, the system’s president and CEO, said he would never forget the patients who died or staff who died, but he also wanted to recall the thousands of people who came into the hospital under “dire” circumstances, “unbelievably worried,” as well as their families, but they went home because of the “great work of the staff” at LIJ and across the health system.

“That’s something to reflect on as well,” he said.

Two team members that did survive are Marie Ann Brussels Jabon and Naph Jabon, who are both nurses at the Stern Family Center for Rehabilitation in Manhasset. The couple, who are now both back to work, spoke of their own journey as a family.

Brussels was COVID-19 positive when she delivered her son, Lyon, on April 23 and she was incubated two days later when the virus progressed. She was able to go home 11 days later and Lyon is now a healthy 10-month-old.

“Thanks to God; thanks to everyone over here — LIJ was so great — I am here with my family right now,” she said. “I will be forever thankful.”

Brussels, who spent time on a respirator and was in dire shape before recovering, said there was a point where she thought she would not make it.

“I was very fortunate that I did. Not everyone made it. They saved my son’s life. That’s the most important thing. To have a new life after all of this, it will wake you up and inspire you to help more people,” she said.

In the last year, the health system also saw advances in the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19.

Northwell Health Labs was one of the nation’s first hospital-based labs to test for COVID-19 and the system staffed the state’s first drive-thru testing site in Westchester to help the residents of New Rochelle, which was the East Coast’s first hotspot, officials said.

Researchers at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research conducted several clinical trials in record time, helped expand ventilator capabilities and 3D print nasal swabs during a nationwide crunch for both, all the while operations teams retrofitted hospitals to create more beds and physicians used several therapies to reduce hospitalizations, officials said.

The system’s Center for Emergency Medical Services, which has the largest hospital-based ambulance fleet on the East Coast, became a leader in load balancing by keeping hospitals in hard-hit Queens from being overrun by transferring patients throughout the system, officials said.

Northwell’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Battinelli said it took every ounce of courage and innovation for the health system to gain the upper hand on the ”devastating virus.”

“Yes, we lost patients, co-workers, friends and loved ones,” he said. “But we saved so many more. We are working to find ever more effective therapies – and with three different vaccines being deployed, the end of the pandemic is within sight.”