18 March, 2020

Coronavirus Ravages 7 Members of a Single Family, Killing 2

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/nyregion/new-jersey-family-coronavirus.html
Grace Fusco — mother of 11, grandmother of 27 — would sit in the same pew at church each Sunday, surrounded by nearly a dozen members of her sprawling Italian-American family. Sunday dinners drew an even larger crowd to her home in central New Jersey.

Now, her close-knit clan is united anew by unspeakable grief: Mrs. Fusco, 73, and four of her children are hospitalized with coronavirus. Two children who contracted the virus have died in the last week.

Mrs. Fusco’s eldest child, Rita Fusco-Jackson, 55, of Freehold, N.J., died Friday with the virus, a relative said. Her eldest son, Carmine Fusco, of Bath, Pa., died on Wednesday, said the relative, Roseann Paradiso Fodera.

Three of the four siblings who remain hospitalized are in critical condition, Ms. Paradiso Fodera said.