YONKERS, N.Y.—Every week Tony Overby comes to a pediatric nursing home near New York City to talk to his daughter Tonyka through a black metal fence.
He can’t visit her inside because of state rules aimed at preventing the spread of coronavirus. Most of the 169 children and young people at the home haven’t been able to hug or kiss their parents for five months. Visits inside stopped in early March.
“Hey Nika-boo!” Mr. Overby called out to his daughter on a recent morning, as she sat silently in a wheelchair on the other side of a high fence at Elizabeth Seton Children’s Center. “Told you I’d be back!”
Now 20 years old, Tonyka has lived in the center since she was 12. She lost her eyesight, some brain development and the use of her limbs after a severe asthma attack deprived her of oxygen for too long.
Tonyka can’t speak but can blink once for no, twice for yes, and smiles when she hears her father’s voice. In normal times, she and her dad listened to pop music and Disney movies together. When he could put his arms around her, he could feel her relax.
The Elizabeth Seton Children's Center, a children's pediatric nursing home, in Yonkers.
“It’s so frustrating, you want to touch your daughter,” said Mr. Overby, a school crossing guard supervisor who lives in Harlem. “You want her to feel your love.’’
The not-for-profit center in Yonkers is one of the largest pediatric nursing homes in the country. Its officials and families are pleading with the state Department of Health to loosen visiting restrictions.
Desperate for contact when the center barred visitors this spring, several parents started living in their children’s rooms, knowing that if they left, they couldn’t return. One mother stayed nearly three months.
“I can’t tell you how many parents I’ve seen sobbing outside that fence,” said Patricia Tursi, the center’s chief executive officer.
The Department of Health requires the facility to follow nursing home rules that ban visits for 28 days if a staffer or resident tests positive for Covid-19. Center officials say their facility should be treated as a hospital, which would allow each child to have a parent at the bedside.
Because of the stringent infection controls, no patient at the center has tested positive for coronavirus or had a viral infection since March 17, center officials said. They said it spends $200,000 a month on weekly virus testing for more than 600 employees, with 45 positives among 8,758 tests, for a positivity rate below 1% as of Monday, lower than the state’s. The center’s last positive test was Aug. 7.
A Department of Health spokeswoman said the six pediatric nursing homes statewide asked to be licensed as nursing homes and must follow rules for that license. Two of the six have met the criteria for visits, with no employees or patients testing positive for 28 days.
The department’s “main priority is doing everything possible to keep children in nursing homes safe and protected from Covid-19,” the spokeswoman, Jill Montag, said in an email. A facility can make a plan for a family visit, she said, if it is medically necessary. Or, by state rules, if a child is dying.
Only a small share of the center’s families have had the chance to be together lately, such as during specialized medical appointments off-site.
Another loophole enabled 33 children to see parents for short meetings at the on-site school during summer session, its officials said. That school goes by State Education Department rules, which require parents to participate in plans for students with special needs.
Many parents hope for reunions when classrooms reopen Sept. 2. But some patients are too young for school or have finished it, and some parents can’t go during school hours because they work.
Most patients are nonverbal. About 65 are on ventilators. Parents worry some children might think they have been abandoned since the lockdown. Some have regressed in their behavior, scratching their skin and banging their arms on their wheelchairs.
Sen. Gustavo Rivera and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, Democrats who chair the health committees of their legislative bodies, have written to the governor and state health commissioner to ask them to loosen the visiting rules. They said parents are essential parts of their children’s care teams, and with hundreds of employees, it is hard for centers to have 28 days of negative tests.
Late Wednesday the governor’s office referred a request for comment to the Department of Health, saying the agency is “reviewing plans to expand visitation in these facilities.”
So far New York’s health department reports 16 children under age 20 have died of Covid-19 statewide, and not one was in a pediatric nursing home. Geriatric nursing homes have had more than 6,450 deaths confirmed or presumed to be tied to Covid-19, by state data.
Christopher Greco talking with his mother, Tracy, at the Elizabeth Seton Children's Center.
Photo: Elizabeth Seton Children's CenterChristopher Greco, a 14-year-old with autism and a seizure disorder, moved into the center just two days before the lockdown. His father, Chris, worries his son is lonely and confused because he was used to having his mother or grandmother with him all day at his previous facility.
“Just like that, like a light switch, nobody is with him,” Mr. Greco said. The family has tried FaceTime but isn’t sure he understands it. The nonverbal boy laughs, cries and bangs on his wheelchair during calls. His father thinks he may be happy to hear from them but frustrated they haven’t had a real visit in five months.
One patient pleading for visits is Stephanie Gabaud, among the oldest at 22. Born with spina bifida and wearing a Wonder Woman T-shirt on Monday, she talked about spending nearly her whole life in the center.
“Not to hug or kiss my mom or dad has been really hard,” Ms. Gabaud said, her voice starting to quiver. She tells them she doesn’t want to meet at the fence because it would be too painful to endure the barrier. “I would start crying,” she said.
Stephanie Gabaud, 22, has spent nearly her entire life at Elizabeth Seton Children's Center and says it has been hard not being able to hug or kiss her parents.
Write to Leslie Brody at leslie.brody@wsj.com
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