CDC has just screwed healthcare workers

[rainbow4321]

They’ve changed their “recommendations”.

Instead of healthcare worker exposed to Covid19 being self-quarantined for 14 days, they’ve changed it to if the worker has no symptoms, they can still report to work if they were only “briefly” around a positive patient.

Ummmm....what happened to you can still be contagious pre-symptom? Also, if the worker has on an N95, CDC is saying they are “low risk” for being exposed. Uh-huh—like the healthcare workers in China? The ones who got sick even with full hazmat suits?

The CDC *admits* these changes are being made ONLY to prevent hospital staffing problems. Make workers work til they get symptoms. Even tho they may still be contagious to other patients, their own families, the community.

Oh...and hospitals no longer have to screen workers for fever/respiratory symptoms.

Notice this particular CDC update is flying *under media radar*, no big CDC announcement. No Pence team announcement. Can’t let America really know how close our healthcare system is to collapsing.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/healthcare-workers-exposed-to-coronavirus-get-new-cdc-guidelines.html

The updated guidelines advise that healthcare workers who have had low-risk exposure to the virus but are asymptomatic be allowed to continue to provide care if options to improve staffing have been exhausted at their organization. This decision should be made in consultation with the organization's occupational health program, the CDC stated.

Low-risk exposures generally refers to brief interactions with COVID-19 patients or longer contact with patients who were wearing a face mask while the healthcare worker also was wearing a face mask or respirator.

The CDC made several other updates to its guidelines, including removing a requirement that asks healthcare facilities to ensure clinicians with low-risk exposure to the virus do not have a fever or respiratory symptoms when reporting for work. It is now optional for facilities to verify absence of fever and respiratory symptoms among healthcare workers coming in to work.

The updated guidance also removes requirements for tracing the people an exposed healthcare worker might have come into contact with and conducting risk assessments for those workers. It acknowledges that "while contact tracing and risk assessment … remains the recommended strategy for identifying and reducing the risk of transmission of COVID-19 to [healthcare personnel], patients, and others, it is not practical or achievable in all situations."

[KY_EnviroGuy]

1. Don't think they can force healthcare facilities to weaken their standards.

Professional facilities can set the standards they see fit for their particular public environment......

Otherwise, they're setting themselves up for a day in court or for being disciplined by their liability insurance carriers.

[rainbow4321]

3. Evergreen in WA already said they were going by this

One of their admin was quoted in a NYT article saying they would go by the new CDC guidelines with no quarantines. Said they pulled some workers back into work before the 14 days were up. Of all places...Covid19 ground zero.
Hospitals nationwide will leap at the chance to follow the new guidelines. Don’t have to pay people in quarantine, don’t have to pay to bring in temp staff, get to keep their staffing levels what they were pre-Covid19. It all comes down to money.
It’s not like the CDC is saying “hey, we were wrong...no one is contagious before symptoms”. Instead, they admit that frontline workers won’t be quarantined because of staffing levels. Risking their health, their co-workers’ health, other patients’/families’, the community. And then they will act surprised when this keeps spreading in the hospital/community. Gee, is it because you had exposed workers taking care of other patients, going out/about their communities while they were “symptom free” yet exposed?

[RockRaven]

2. I think it is more accurate to say "The CDC just admitted the US health care system is screwed"

Workers, absolutely. Patients too.

It's not so much proactive-screwing of workers on the CDC's part. Just a pathetic rolling over and giving up without resistance kind of thing. A failure of their mandate and ethos, to be sure.

Patients, of course, are screwed either way. Either their care-givers are absent, or their care-givers risk exposing them. Either way, patients are screwed.

The CDC is outright admitting that this shit is so out of hand that it is not possible to track every contact. If people don't understand that this means YOU ALL WILL BE EXPOSED WITHOUT KNOWING IT, they are living in a fantasy-land.

[OhioChick]

4. 6 UH staff under home quarantine after coming in close contact with COVID-19 patients

3:56 PM, Mar 10, 2020

CLEVELAND — Six employees from University Hospitals are under self-quarantine after coming in close contact with the three patients in Cuyahoga County who are confirmed to have coronavirus (COVID-19).

According to a news release from UH, the employees are being monitored by the Ohio Department of Health as well as the Cuyahoga County Board of health. Their tests are currently pending.

None of the employees have been hospitalized.

The hospital said that three patients went to their primary care physician at UH and were screened via COVID-19 protocol. From there, the patients were then sent to the emergency room where they were examined by hospital staff wearing eye protection, gowns, gloves and N95 masks in a negative pressure room.

The hospital said it was unable to provide additional information due to patient confidentiality.

https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/continuing-coverage/coronavirus/6-uh-staff-under-home-quarantine-after-coming-in-close-contact-with-covid-19-patients

Thankfully, that's not happening here...yet.

[UpInArms]

5. And the CDC has now lowered the face mask requirement

🤦🏽?♀️

This whole fiasco is a crime in real time

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/face-mask-shortage-prompts-cdc-to-loosen-coronavirus-guidance/ar-BB110OpU

A shortage of specialized masks has prompted federal health officials to loosen their recommendations on the face protection that front line health-care workers should use to prevent infection from the highly contagious disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Instead of recommending that health-care workers use specialized masks known as N95 respirators, which filter out about 95 percent of airborne particles, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted new guidelines Tuesday that said “the supply chain of respirators cannot meet demand” and that looser fitting surgical face masks “are an acceptable alternative."

The more commonly worn surgical masks will limit — but not eliminate — the chance of inhaling large, infectious particles circulating near the face. Until Tuesday, the CDC had recommended that health-care workers interacting with coronavirus patients or suspected cases wear N95 respirators, along with gowns, gloves and eye protectors. The N95 filters must be custom-fitted and cost more than surgical masks.

[OhioChick]

6. That deserves a thread of it's own n/t

[UpInArms]

7. Put one up in LBN

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142445075

This is crazy dangerous

[OhioChick]

8. Thanks n/t

[rainbow4321]

9. This is sickening

Wrong equipment, no quarantine allowed, don’t check workers for symptoms....this is gonna explode into even more of a deadly shit show.

[MerryBlooms]

10. omg, what a nightmare.

[Amaryllis]

11. Is this a cousin of the five second rule? "if the worker has no symptoms, they can still report to

work if they were only “briefly” around a positive patient. "

[RobinA]

12. Well, In Reality

what are they supposed to do to continue to function when it comes down to it? I get the potential problems, but what is the answer here? Mistakes have been made, but there just is not an answer for everything. And I'm a health care worker who doesn't work the physically ill. We got the message yesterday, stay home if you are asymptomatic and you use your vacation. Any one of us could turn up sick tomorrow and we will have come into contact with 30 - 40 people before any symptoms. But to avoid that, every staff would have to stay home just in case.