March 17, 2020 / By Lenny Bernstein, Shawn Boburg, Maria Sacchetti and Emma Brown
Dozens of health-care workers have fallen ill with covid-19, and more are quarantined after exposure to the virus, an expected but worrisome development as the U.S. health system girds for an anticipated surge in infections.
From hotspots such as the Kirkland, Wash., nursing home where nearly four dozen staffers tested positive for the coronavirus, to outbreaks in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, California and elsewhere, the virus is picking off doctors, nurses and others needed in the rapidly expanding crisis.
“We all suspect it’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Liam Yore, a board member of the Washington state chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians.
“The risk to our health-care workers is one of the great vulnerabilities of our health-care system in an epidemic like this,” he said. “Most ERs and health-care systems are running at capacity in normal times.”
Gauging how badly providers have been hit is difficult because no nationwide data has been released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, medical associations or health-care worker unions. A federal official who was not authorized to talk with the media, and so spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the government has received reports of more than 60 infections among health-care workers. More than a dozen are related to travel. Authorities are investigating how the others happened.
