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A woman in her 30s who worked as an orderly in the long-term care home CHSLD Lucien-G.-Rolland in St-Jérôme has succumbed to COVID-19.

She died of complications of the virus on Monday, her union announced on its Facebook page, identifying her only as Stéphanie. Her last name has not yet been made public.

“We are all in mourning,” Marie-Claude Ouellette, a member of the executive of the Syndicat des travailleuses et travailleurs des Laurentides en santé et services sociaux wrote on the union’s Facebook page. “When one of our own leaves us, we can only cherish our memories of her. We offer our most sincere condolences to her family and those close to her.”

She added that people who work in the healthcare field do so to help take care of the public, but don’t expect they will have to make the ultimate sacrifice on the job.

“For now, there are a lot of questions that still have to be answered,” she wrote. “This sad event shows us all the risk that healthcare workers are putting themselves in to help the province get through this crisis.”

It is the first death due to COVID-19 of any member of that union. However, it was the second death of an orderly in less than two weeks. On April 17, longtime care worker, Victoria Salvan, died just a few days after her last shift working at the CHSLD Grace Dart in the east end of Montreal. Salvan had 28 years of experience working as an orderly.

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