Pandemic dubbed an occupational health `disaster'
Front-line workers inadequately protected, research group says
Far too many front-line workers in the health sector have been, and continue to be, “needlessly sacrificed” by being inadequately protected on the job during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a global group of independent researchers that includes several members based at the University of Windsor.
The failure by health and government authorities to properly respond to the public health crisis has been “unbelievable … from an occupational health perspective, this has been a disaster,” said James Brophy, an adjunct professor at the University of Windsor's sociology department.
Brophy is also an occupational health researcher.
Drawing from a growing number of scientific reports — including one authored by Brophy and his wife Margaret Keith, also a university adjunct professor and researcher, that focused on Ontario health workers — the researchers from Canada, the U.S., Australia and the U.K. issued a news release on the weekend calling for stricter safety measures and better protection for those on the front lines.
Health-care workers, said Brophy, continue to suffer one of the highest rates of COVID-19 infection, with Ontario alone having seen over 20,000 workers in that sector catch the virus over the past year.
The current ramping up of vaccinations is “great news,” said Keith. But the vaccines going into arms do not provide 100-per cent protection, the researchers say, and the more rapidly spreading and resistant of the coronavirus variants are what's fuelling the third wave of the pandemic.
“There's so much we still don't know — we have to err on the side of precaution,” said Keith.
She and Brophy said they both argued in favour of the “precautionary principle” in the early planning stages of Ontario's fight against the spread of COVID-19.
“We were told the evidence was not there yet, but it's since been confirmed in study after study after study,” said Keith.
Nurses and workers in hospitals, as well as other health and long-term care settings, were “sacrificed, to put it bluntly ... (government actions) were based on economics and politics and not on science,” she said.
Brophy and Keith were part of an Ontario study published in the fall that cited “intense anxiety” and emotional distress among some front-line workers, like nurses, cleaners and personal support workers, who expressed frustration, fear and anger due to understaffing and underfunding, and the lack of adequate protection, as well as poor preparations, despite warnings of the potential for future pandemics following the similar SARS outbreak in 2003.
“We heard really tragic and disturbing stories,” said Brophy.
He and Keith said COVID -19 will have long-term negative repercussions for health sector workers who have been overworked and who felt abandoned and not supported. The same message was heard from other researchers across the globe.
“All the things the SARS commission proposed was ignored — it's a great frustration to us,” said Brophy.
More than a year after Ontario declared a provincial health emergency, he said it was only last Thursday that the Ontario government announced it would launch “zero-tolerance workplace safety inspections” at warehouses, food processors and manufacturers in the regions hardest hit by COVID-19.
One of the points the researchers emphasized this weekend was the need for governments to acknowledge that SARS-COV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is an airborne virus — not just bigger droplets — that can be spread much more easily simply through breathing or talking.
Face masks, said Brophy, “offer some protection, but it's not adequate, certainly not in close quarters.”
Not all workers in the healthcare sector are properly protected, he said, including having access to N95 respirators or other masks with a close facial fit.
“I think our whole strategy has been, get the numbers down so the ICUS are not overrun so they can deal with all the cases — it's not a good strategy,” said Brophy.
“And we keep reapplying the same strategy over and over again,” he said, adding it's leading to a growing number of people questioning and resisting the government's handling of the crisis, and that could result in more people also questioning being vaccinated.
“I'm very nervous about that ... the anger is starting to mount,” said Brophy.
Even if all of Canada gets vaccinated, Brophy said it's “ludicrous to think we'll be safe” when vast numbers of the globe, including large populations in Latin America, Africa and Asia, don't have the same access to vaccines. Most of what's available has been spoken for by a relatively small number of wealthier nations.
The head of the World Health Organization said on Monday that the COVID -19 pandemic “is a long way from over” and that transmission was being driven by “confusion, complacency and inconsistency in public health measures.”
All the things the SARS commission proposed was ignored