Because Phoebe failed to test the patient, it’s impossible, Pollock told me, to know for sure whether he carried the virus into the hospital or contracted it there. What’s certain, though, is that the phone call from Atlanta was the first time Phoebe understood that dozens of its staff had been exposed to the virus. At the minimum, the hospital was as much a superspreader location for Albany’s outbreak, Pollock said, as the two Black funerals that Phoebe officials had called out in that March 2020 press briefing.

“It was an abject failure on Phoebe’s part not to test him and isolate him as soon as he entered the hospital,” Pollock said. He pointed out that although tests were hard to come by at the time, the Atlanta-area hospital tested the patient as soon as he arrived. Phoebe’s failure to do so, he said, “made it difficult to pinpoint when and where the first case occurred. Instead of admitting as much, Phoebe wanted to find an explanation that omitted their medical mishaps. It amounted to a cover up.”