Pharmacy Workers Coming Down With Covid-19, Can't Afford To Stop Working
'Pharmacy Workers Coming Down With Covid-19, Can't Afford To Stop Working,' Pro Publica/Truthout, 4/10/20. By Ava Kofman.
At his home in the Bronx, where he lies in bed with a fever, Jose Peralta keeps replaying the scene in his head. It was Monday, March 16, the start of an unusually hectic week at a Walgreens in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. Peralta, a senior pharmacy technician, was on his way to take a break when he noticed a familiar customer waiting in line to pick up medication. “I thought, Gee it would be nice to help this guy,” Peralta said. “We’ve all been trying to minimize exposure and make sure that people don’t have to spend too long in the store.”
Returning to the counter, Peralta chatted briefly with the customer only a few feet away. Even though he was working at the center of the nation’s coronavirus outbreak, Walgreens hadn’t given him gloves or a mask, he said. A few days later, during routine calls to customers about medication ready for pickup, Peralta learned that the customer whom he had helped had tested positive for COVID-19. Peralta notified his manager that he may have been exposed to the virus. The manager checked with headquarters and told him to keep working, Peralta said. Toward the end of March, Peralta and two colleagues started to come down with telltale symptoms: A loss of smell and taste. Fatigue. Body aches. He realized that he might be laid up for weeks — far longer than his sick pay would last.
- A pharmacist works while wearing PPE/personal protective equipment in New York City.
Pharmacy workers like Peralta are on the front lines of the nation’s response to the pandemic, providing medications and advice to an ever growing number of Americans. Yet like other businesses deemed essential in the coronavirus outbreak, Walgreens and CVS have been accused by employees of failing to protect their health or provide adequate sick pay. The nation’s two biggest retail pharmacy chains are among at least a dozen large companies, including groceries and delivery services, whose employees have circulated petitions seeking stronger safety measures.
Twenty-five Walgreens and CVS employees told ProPublica that they’re coping with more customers, prescriptions and payments than ever before without a corresponding increase in staffing or safety measures. (Nearly all of the workers requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly and feared losing their jobs.)
Though precautions vary from one store to the next, Peralta and employees at several other Walgreens stores said that throughout March, they did not receive masks, gloves, cleaning supplies or plexiglass shields to separate them from customers.
Without sufficient safeguards, pharmacies could become vectors spreading the coronavirus within communities, according to Denis Nash, a professor of epidemiology at the CUNY School of Public Health. “This is not a hospital setting per se, but it is a busy place where sick people may be going at a time when transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is high,” he said. After Peralta reported that he had been exposed to the virus, the Chelsea store on 8th Avenue was not closed for disinfecting, he said. Nor did Walgreens alert customers or workers picking up shifts for self-quarantined colleagues that several workers had fallen sick, Peralta said. In at least seven Walgreens including Peralta’s, workers who have been exposed to the virus said that the company has not shut down the stores for cleaning and has not given full sick pay to workers quarantined with presumed positive cases.
“They’re staying open, they’re not being sanitized and no one there is being warned that this is a problem,” Peralta said. “People are going to work sick with this virus because they can’t afford to stay home.”
Both Walgreens and CVS said they are following all government guidelines. “Walgreens champions the health and well-being of every community in America, playing a critical role in providing patients and customers access to the care, products and services they need,” said Molly Sheehan, a Walgreens spokeswoman...
Read More, https://truthout.org/articles/pharmacy-workers-coming-down-with-covid-19-cant-afford-to-stop-working/
