COVID-19 kills 9 nuns at New York convent within a month

Jan 1, 2021

|Associated Press

COVID-19 kills 9 nuns at New York convent within a month — The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet convent in Latham, New York. (Credit: Google Maps.)

LATHAM, New York — Nine nuns have died of causes related to COVID-19 at an upstate New York convent in just over a month, county officials said.

Albany County is aware of the deaths among the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in Latham, county spokesperson Mary Rozak said in a statement emailed to the Times Union on behalf of county Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen.

“Four of the deaths associated with the congregation had been previously reported earlier this month by the hospitals,” Whalen said in the statement. “The other five were not reported to the Albany County Department of Health by the facility.”

WNYT-TV reported Dec. 11 that 22 sisters tested positive for the coronavirus at St. Joseph’s.

The convent is home to 140 nuns, according to its website.

A spokesperson for the convent, Sister Mary Rose Noonan, was not ready to issue a statement, according to Mary DeTurris Poust, a spokesperson for the Catholic Diocese of Albany.