Spencer Kent is the lead health reporter at NJ.com and The Star-Ledger where he has been covering the pandemic since January. He has been covering research and medical information, while also trying to capture the scale of human loss.
However, Kent felt the magnitude of the pandemic in mid-March when he received a tip that six members of a New Jersey family were in intensive care, in hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania due to contacting the coronavirus at a family gathering two week earlier.
Kent worked extensively to break the story of the Fusco family. He continued to follow the tragedy as it unfolded with four family members dying.
“I see the Fusco family as the quintessential canary in the coal mine situation,” Kent explains. “That story was one of the most stressful things, because I was dealing with a lot of family members, an overarching medical story, and a terrible tragedy.”
Kent joined the company in 2012 as a breaking news reporter in South Jersey before finally taking on the post of health reporter.
He graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in communications.
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