The Pathologist: She Confronts the Virus From Inside Nursing Homes

This article was originally published by The New York Times.

A few days a week, Lubab al-Quraishi, 47, wakes up before sunrise and drives to the diagnostics lab where she works as a pathology assistant, in northern New Jersey. There, she picks up the gloves, gowns, face masks and face shields she needs to do her job in relative safety. Then she’s back on the road, crossing the Hudson River into New York City, sometimes alone, staving off exhaustion, and sometimes dozing in the passenger seat while a colleague drives.

Months ago, when the coronavirus was just starting to spread through the U.S., the director of the lab asked employees to help test for the virus in nursing homes. Many of al-Quraishi’s colleagues were nervous about the work. One of the first major outbreaks in the U.S. had taken place in a Seattle-area nursing home, and now it seemed elderly Americans across the country were vectors of a little understood but frightening disease. The director explained that testing for the disease could expose his staff members’ families. “He didn’t think anyone would do it,” she said. “I said, ‘I am ready.’”

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