Exclusive: nearly 600 US health workers died of Covid-19 - and the toll is rising

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Nearly 600 frontline healthcare workers have died of Covid-19, according to Lost on the Frontline, a project launched by the Guardian and Kaiser Health News (KHN) that aims to count, verify and memorialize and every healthcare worker who dies during the pandemic.

The tally includes doctors, nurses and paramedics, as well as crucial healthcare support staff such as hospital janitors, administrators and nursing home workers, who have put their own lives at risk during the pandemic to help care for others. Lost on the Frontline has now published the names and obituaries for more than 100 workers.

A majority of those documented were identified as people of color, mostly African American and Asian/Pacific Islander. Profiles of more victims, and an updated count, will be added to our news sites twice weekly going forward.

There is no other comprehensive accounting of US healthcare workers’ deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has counted 368 Covid deaths among healthcare workers, but acknowledges its tally is an undercount. The CDC does not identify individuals.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/exclusive-nearly-600-us-health-workers-died-of-covid-19-%e2%80%93-and-the-toll-is-rising/ar-BB156Tuv?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=hplocalnews

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

Some of the first to die faced troubling conditions at work. Rose Harrison, 60, a registered nurse, wore no mask while taking care of a Covid-19 patient at an Alabama nursing home, according to her daughter. She felt pressured to work until the day she was hospitalized. The nursing home did not respond to requests for comment.

Thomas Soto, 59, a Brooklyn radiology clerk faced delays in accessing protective gear, including a mask, even as his hospital was overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients, his son said. The hospital did not respond to requests for comment.

The Lost on the Frontline team is documenting other worrying trends. Healthcare workers across the US said failures in communication left them unaware they were working alongside people infected with the virus. And occupational safety experts raised alarms about CDC guidance permitting workers treating Covid-19 patients to wear surgical masks – which are far less protective than N95 masks.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency responsible for protecting workers, has launched dozens of fatality investigations into health workers’ deaths. But recent agency memos raise doubts that many employers will be held responsible for negligence.

[Botany]

2. But Trump, Kushner, and Pompeo sent almost 18 tons of P.P.E. to China in Jan. and Feb. of 2020

and that equipment would have saved the lives and the health of some of the doctors, nurses, health care
workers, and 1st responders.

[Hortensis]

3. Dreadful. Heroic as so many are, the Republican leadership's

depraved indifference to life was to virtually every healthcare worker in the nation because most didn't really have a choice. For moral reasons, economic, duty to their jobs and coworkers, they have to risk their lives.