No healthcare worker should be infected with Covid-19 at work, says senior epidemiologist

New Zealand should aim for zero healthcare workers to become infected with Covid-19 while doing their job, says a senior epidemiologist.

And Labor Relations Minister Andrew Little said there should be an investigation into how nearly 100 health workers contracted the deadly virus at work during the first outbreak.

the Weekend herald revealed that one in 10 of all confirmed cases with a local source as of mid-June was a health worker who, according to the Health Ministry, was likely infected at his workplace.

The ministry was unable to provide data on the work those 96 were doing, be it in a hospital, a testing site or a nursing home or even in what region they were located.

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University of Otago epidemiologist Michael Baker has long called for data on healthcare workers infected with Covid-19 to be reported on the ministry’s website.

Without it, it was impossible to trace patterns and identify vulnerabilities in policies, practices or systems to find how to reduce risk, he said.

“New Zealand should target zero infected health workers.”

At least five healthcare workers are among the confirmed cases of the second outbreak, but only the nurse who works at the Jet Park Hotel and who was treating a person positive for Covid contracted the virus at work has been confirmed.

Yesterday there were two new cases of Covid-19, one in managed isolation and another in the community that was still being investigated. Four people were in the hospital.

And the contact trackers had been in contact with all but six of the 3,918 close case contacts. More than 8,300 tests were processed on Friday.

Baker said the ministry should also regularly report and update data on health worker infections so that the advice it gives to employers is as up-to-date as possible.

The New Zealand Nurses Organization and E Tū want an independent investigation into how workers contracted the virus and say WorkSafe should do so because it is a health and safety concern.

WorkSafe has rejected this because it does not investigate clinical incidents.

The Health Ministry is working on a descriptive report on the subject, which it hopes to publish this month.

There have been three other investigations involving healthcare workers, including the Auditor General’s report on personal protective equipment and a review of how seven nurses contracted the virus at Waitākere Hospital, but no far-reaching investigation was conducted on the broader topic.

Baker said that any employer who has a worker infected with the virus should thoroughly investigate and then share that report widely so others can learn from it.

Little said that since one in 10 people were infected in their workplace, he would hope that “it would be enough for WorkSafe to think” of doing a general consultation with every board of health and every provider to make sure the appropriate measures are in place. .

“And to make sure they were doing everything they could to prevent transmission to healthcare workers. Those healthcare workers have been absolutely vital and continue to be absolutely vital – we cannot allow them to get sick from this virus.

“The circumstances are such that we need some assurance that everything that could be done was being done.”

National health spokesman Shane Reti said it was “frustrating in several ways” that the public did not know more about health workers who were infected.

If several of them were hospital cleaners, for example, that would indicate there is a systemic flaw in the way they keep them safe, he said.

Or if a large number wore glasses, maybe that meant their PPE didn’t fit, he said.

“It is not difficult to find data,” Reti said.

“We really need to identify the fault in the system and how we let them down, and they have been let down, and figure out how we can fix it.”