Outside hard-hit nursing home, staffers find nervous public

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — They can't get taxis or child care. Two were refused service at a gas station. Another's trip to a pharmacy prompted a concerned call.

Staffers at a nursing home dubbed “ ground zero ” for West Virginia's growing coronavirus caseload have been treated as pariahs for their close proximity to the infection cluster, officials said Friday.

“It's heartbreaking for them," Carl Shrader, medical director for the Sundale nursing home, told The Associated Press in an interview. “And they're already in a fragile place from what they're being asked to do.”

Twenty-one residents and eight staffers at the Morgantown nursing home have tested positive for the virus since the first case was discovered Sunday. Monongalia County, where the facility is located, has the most cases in a state that reported at least 96 positive cases as of Friday night.

As a skeleton crew working 16-hour shifts fights to contain the virus, care for elderly residents and field phone calls from worried relatives unable to visit, fear in the community is making their lives, and the lives of family members, more difficult.

One staffer was told to get back when she tried to use a card to pay for items at a gas station. A babysitter told another employee, “No, I don't want your child in my home" because of virus concerns. When a third wearing a Sundale shirt entered a pharmacy, the store called the nursing home wanting to know how many other staffers had been there, Shrader said.

The families of Sundale staffers have become targets, too, with some bosses telling them to stay home because a spouse or relative works at the nursing home, according to Shrader. One employee's husband was even pelted with Clorox wipes at his workplace.

“When you're sitting across the table from them and you hear the stories and how it's...