NO GOOD DEED

Inflatable Costume Eyed in ER Outbreak That Infected 43 Hospital Workers

The air-powered getup may have fueled exposure at the San Jose hospital.

Forty-three staffers at a California hospital were infected with COVID-19 in an outbreak that may have been fueled by an air-powered, inflatable Christmas costume, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Kaiser Permanente San Jose says an employee appeared in the emergency room wearing the get-up on Christmas Day to lift the spirits of stressed-out co-workers and patients. “Any exposure, if it occurred, would have been completely innocent, and quite accidental, as the individual had no COVID symptoms,” the hospital said in a statement. The 43 employees who tested positive in the last week are now in quarantine, and the ER is undergoing a deep-cleaning.