Allegra Boverman
When Walter Riley was first asked about Villa Crest Nursing Home in Manchester the place where his fiancé, 68-year-old Marge Gardner, worked as a housekeeper before she died of Covid-19 he could scarcely contain his bitterness.
“The bastards,” he said. “They didn’t give her adequate protection. They didn’t have instructions on how to fit it. They never should have sent her in those rooms, knowing her age and her condition. They knew she had diabetes.”
In December, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, fined the nursing home $20,820 for two violations: “The employer did not ensure that an effective respiratory protection program was established with worksite-specific procedures for respirator use … such as but not limited to fit testing and medical evaluations,” and it did not report the death after eight hours. Riley, who filed the OSHA complaint two months after Gardner died on June 11, called it a “cover-up.�