NYC Radio: WOR Reporter Infected Others With COVID-19

Alice Stockton-Rossini

WOR 710 AM news reports Alice Stockton-Rossini, who covered the coronavirus containment zone in Westchester believes she unknowingly infected at least six people at her mom’s 90th birthday party in New Jersey — some of whom later died.

“I can hardly bear it,” 710 WOR’s Alice Stockton-Rossini told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “I had to tell my mother her best friend died.”

Stockton-Rossini said she caught the deadly bug in early March while doing on-mic interviews in New Rochelle, then the heart of New York’s coronavirus outbreak.

Not long after, on March 8, she threw a birthday bash for her elderly mother, Jackie Stockton, at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church on Long Beach Island, NJ.

“I’m having this party for my mother,” she recalled. “I invited the whole church.”

About 25 people attended the celebration, where guests greeted each other with “fist pumps” and Stockton-Rossini served mimosas.

But the next day, her mom fell sick — and was soon hospitalized. A few days later, Stockton-Rossini herself awoke with chills.

“Oh my … God,” she remembers thinking. “Did I bring this down here?”

In total, at least seven people at the party have become sick with the virus and two have died, Stockton-Rossini said.

One of the fatal cases was her mom’s next-door neighbor and close friend Sandy Medford, 76.

On Tuesday, Long Beach Island health officer Dan Krupinski said the tragic “community cluster” had been traced back to the birthday party, reports The NY Post.