The first to get sick was a woman in the nurse staffing office, who died in mid-March after a girls’ trip to Las Vegas with some hospital colleagues.

A nursing manager fell ill next, followed by a nurse on the night shift and then a day supervisor. A short time later, a day shift nurse went out and then a temp.

At the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, the nurses on a second-floor medical-surgical unit kept the grim tally in furtive texts and emails: Six women who had worked on their ward or visited it in the course of their duties had developed symptoms of the coronavirus. Four reported testing positive, one had yet to be tested and one was dead.

Yet from the hospital administration, the worried employees said they heard nothing about what appeared to be an outbreak of the virus within the hospital’s walls. There was no official acknowledgment of the cases, and nurses who shared phone headsets, computer keyboards and a tiny break room were not tested, according to interviews and correspondence reviewed by The Times.

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