To our Readers:
In an effort to keep our community informed during the public-health crisis, we will post local virus-related information free of charge.
If you have any crisis-related stories, please submit them to ([email protected]).
For comprehensive daily news, home delivery and online only subscriptions are available via itemlive.com.
Employee of Lynn Walmart, Salem Market Basket dies from coronavirus
By Elyse Carmosino | April 8, 2020
SALEM — An employee of both Walmart in Lynn and Market Basket in Salem has died from COVID-19.
The woman has been identified by her husband as 59-year-old Salem resident Vitalina Williams. Market Basket confirmed her death in a statement Tuesday.
In an interview with the Boston Herald Wednesday, David Williams said his wife was a part-time employee of Market Basket and a full-time employee at Walmart.
“She was full of life. That beautiful, that vibrant,” he said, adding that Vitalina Williams worked two jobs so she could send money to her family in Guatemala each month.
He told the Herald he took his wife to Salem Hospital March 28 after she started running a light fever and began to have trouble breathing.
She was almost immediately put on a ventilator, and her husband said hospital staff tried to contact him before they sedated her, but the call didn’t go through.
“I had to leave her there,” said David Williams, who works at the Market Basket in Danvers. “I couldn’t stay with her. I couldn’t visit her.”
He said he never had the chance to say goodbye.
“She must have been so scared. The last memory I have of her is when she was in the emergency room, wearing her coat and blue hat,” he said.
David Williams told the Herald the Market Basket where his wife worked provided employees with gloves, but said he didn’t think they were given masks.
“Nobody’s to blame, and everybody’s to blame,” he said. “How can you give something you can’t get?”
Market Basket stated two other employees at its Salem location have since tested positive for the virus and have reportedly quarantined themselves and those close to them.
The company said that the cases have been reported to the State Department of Public Health and, as an added precaution, the store has brought in a specialized cleaning crew to disinfect the premises.
In a statement to the Item Wednesday, Walmart spokeswoman Anne Hatfield said: “Vitalina was adored by her Walmart family and will be greatly missed. Our hearts go out to her family.”
Hatfield also said Walmart locations are now receiving shipments of both gloves and masks for workers.
“Stores right now are receiving gloves and masks for every associate, and … we have extensive cleaning measures we’ve implemented throughout the stores,” she said.
Walmart’s website states the company has taken “a number of measures” to protect its employees during this time, including implementing an emergency leave policy, waiving telehealth service fees, and minimizing employee contact with customers.
Last week, Market Basket announced new shopping protocols to keep customers safe, including a limit on the number of shoppers in the store at any given time, a single entrance and exit for customer use, and the sanitization of each carriage by store associates upon customer arrival.
“These changes reflect the wide range of input we have received on a daily basis — from our customers and our associates and from the Governors and public health experts who describe the next several weeks as critical for the health of the residents in our region,” said operations supervisor Joseph Schmidt.