Together AGAIN After a year of the pandemic, vaccinations began to roll out and families were reunited. Tara Zamorano’s family.
BY SABRINA LEE After being in and out of three nursing homes, catching Covid-19 and being isolated from everyone, 90-year-old Elizabeth Ring was finally vaccinated and reunited with her loved ones. She received her second dose of the vaccine on March 22. For Ring’s family and so many other families, the vaccine meant more than just immunity from a virus; families could once again see one another in person after over a year of isolation.
Liz Keyter with her grandfather, Vincent Cardillo, before the pandemic.
Ring’s daughter, Tara Zamorano, used to see her mother multiple times a week before the pandemic, and then suddenly, all of their interactions were only through FaceTime. In December of 2020, Ring started experiencing excruciating pain and could no longer stand by herself. After trips to the emergency room, she was diagnosed with osteomyelitis — a serious infection to the bone that required six weeks of treatment with antibiotics. On top of all of that, she also tested positive for Covid-19, making it impossible for Zamorano to visit her mother. “After Dec. 27th, we couldn’t visit her anymore; we couldn’t see her; we couldn’t
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make sure that she was being cared for in the right way,” Zamorano said. “There wasn’t a time where I wasn’t worried.” Then, in March 2020, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines for fully vaccinated people: “Fully vaccinated grandparents can visit indoors with their unvaccinated healthy daughter and her healthy children without wearing masks or physical distancing, provided none of the unvaccinated family members are at risk of severe Covid-19.” For families like Zamorano, it was an overwhelming relief to visit and care for her mother in person once again. This was also the case for 19-year-old Liz Keyter. Keyter’s 92-year-old grandfather, Vincent Cardillo, had been living alone in New York City for the entirety of the pandemic. After he was fully vaccinated, Keyter decided to give him a surprise visit. Upon seeing his granddaughter for the first in over a year, he was overwhelmed and had to sit down. “Seeing him again was like, ‘OK, there’s some hope; we made it through this; we made it through the worst, hopefully,’” Keyter said. “And if he was still chugging along, that’s really all that mattered to me and my family.”
