Covid 19 coronavirus: one in 10 cases was a healthcare worker doing his job as unions call for a full independent investigation

Nearly 100 healthcare workers were infected with Covid-19 while doing their job during the first outbreak, which is equivalent to 10 percent of all local cases.

Health unions say workplaces failed to keep staff safe and want a WorkSafe investigation. They are also frustrated by the lack of detailed information on how workers were infected with the deadly virus saying “it is not good enough” that has not been publicly reported.

It comes as health officials confirm that the nurse who tested positive for Covid-19 on Sunday was infected while caring for a quarantined patient at the Jet Park Hotel in Auckland.

Data from the ministry shows that 167 healthcare workers contracted Covid-19 as of mid-June; 96 of them “probably got infected” at their workplace.

After eliminating strictly imported cases from the 1504 confirmed cases during the first outbreak, 931 cases were acquired locally.

That means 10 percent of all local cases were probably infected healthcare workers doing their jobs.

There have also been five other healthcare workers linked to the current outbreak, but at this stage health officials can only confirm that the nurse who works at Jet Park was infected while on duty.

Health Director General Ashley Bloomfield said the nurse’s case had been epidemiologically linked to a person who was quarantined at the hotel and needed treatment before being hospitalized.

“The health worker went to their room to provide care and assess them prior to hospitalization,” Bloomfield said.

“A review is taking place right now and then to get a good look at what happened and the circumstances to see if there are any lessons to be learned, any changes in the protocols.”

A separate descriptive report on Covid-19 in healthcare workers is in the process of peer review and the ministry expects it to be released this month.

But until then, the ministry cannot provide data on the work they were doing, be it in a hospital, nursing home or other location or even in what region they were located.

The unions say this is not enough.

E Tu director Sam Jones said health officials should have been tracking the infection rates of frontline health workers and reporting them publicly since the beginning of the pandemic.

“If you don’t find out what went wrong, how do you know what needs to be fixed?”

E Tu is calling for mandatory testing of healthcare workers, and Jones said this would help keep staff and patients safe because often when an infection was identified, it was “too late.”

An independent review of the Covid-19 groups in nursing homes found that there were delays in recognizing that there was an outbreak of accelerated transmission.

A recent survey of its 16,000 healthcare members – who work in nursing homes, home care, and as orderlies, cleaners, foodservice, security, laundry and maintenance workers in hospitals – found that 85 percent wanted testing Mandatory periodic income protection if kept down.

Health unions have long asked for clear reports on the infection rate of health workers after the ministry stopped reporting on its website in April. In May, then-Health Minister David Clark said he had also asked the ministry for that information.

Jones wants an investigation from WorkSafe, which is supported by the nurses union, but has been rejected because WorkSafe considers the infections to be “clinical incidents.”

A spokeswoman confirmed that their position had not changed and that it was unlikely that they would investigate 100 different incidents.

The New Zealand Nurses Organization kaiwhakahaere Kerri Nuku disagreed with WorkSafe, saying the infections were “serious flaws” of health and safety strategies.

Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, workers have the right to work in environments where health risks are properly controlled.

“We need to call it what it is: these are health and safety violations that have put workers at risk,” Nuku said.

During the April shutdown, frontline workers complained about not obtaining PPE and that guidance on when it was needed was confusing. An Auditor General’s investigation later confirmed this.

A separate investigation into how seven nurses at Waitākere Hospital became infected with Covid-19 found that there were “usability” issues with PPE and the nurses were forced to change their protective clothing up to eight times per shift.

Nuku called these investigations “fragmented” and wants the factors that led to their exposure to be fully independently investigated and their recommendations implemented.

A Lancet study of healthcare workers from the UK and the US found that 10-20 percent of all Covid-19 infections occurred among healthcare workers.

And the UK Office for National Statistics found that nurses had “statistically significantly higher death rates related to Covid-19” compared to the general population. In three months, 101 nurses died from the virus and 268 social workers died.

In New York, one in four of the roughly 158,000 nursing home workers in the state was infected with Covid-19 between March and early June.