Mendy Stern claims Hayim Salomon Nursing Home said Mom was ‘fine’ hours before likely coronavirus death

A man says he frantically tried to call his likely-coronavirus-stricken mother’s Brooklyn nursing home to get an update on her condition over the weekend — only to learn she’d died a day earlier when someone finally picked up the phone.

When Mend Stern called the Haym Salomon Home for Nursing and Rehabilitation Friday afternoon to check in on his his 74-year-old mother, Esther Ellen Stern, he says a nurse told him she was “fine.”

But later that night, the concerned son couldn’t reach the nurse for an update about her condition — and again couldn’t get anyone on the phone Saturday morning.

His worst nightmare came true when he finally reached a staffer at the Gravesend facility later that day — his mother had died, likely of COVID-19, in an ambulance on the way to Maimonides Medical Center on Friday night, he said.

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“It’s incredible, it’s unbelievable,” the grief-stricken son told The Post. “I spoke to the nurses’ station the same day [Esther died] and they told me she was fine.”

Stern said a rabbi at the Cropsey Avenue nursing home told his family that several other residents at the facility had also died as a result of the virus.

“I’d had discussions with them about COVID and what their plans were and they said they’re completely bulletproof and on lockdown,” he said of the week-old reassurances. “It went from that to where we are now in no time.”

His mother, a longtime Brooklyn resident who had retired from the head of social services at Kings County Hospital, was in a wheelchair and had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, a type a brain cancer, five years earlier and was recovering.

When she developed a cough several days ago, Stern says he tried to email the nurses at the Haym Salomon Home and got reply messages that they were out sick.

“No one was answering on her floor,” he said.

Esther was never diagnosed with coronavirus, but a chest X-ray showed tell-tale signs of the disease, according to her son, who noted that the nursing home was also treating his mother as if she had the bug.

His brother-in-law, Lou Plotkin, claims he tried to reach a nurse at the facility last week and was told by a harried staffer that he was the only person treating 38 residents at the time.

“We all got the run around,” Plotkin said.

The Haym Salomon Home for Nursing and Rehabilitation did not return repeated requests for comment by The Post.

The coronavirus has killed more than 2,400 New Yorkers at nursing homes and assisted living facilities statewide, according to the latest state statistics.

“We’ve been watching the nursing homes. The nursing homes in many ways are ground zero with their situation,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during his daily press briefing in Albany Thursday.

In Brooklyn alone, more than 390 people have died from the virus at nursing homes and adult care facilities, the data shows.