Like grocery workers and other essential employees, their work cannot be done at home.
“As a front-line, we can do everything right, but still be exposed because we are exposed at work, which we simply cannot avoid,” said Dr. David Rosman, a radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and president of the Massachusetts Medical Society. “Being in the healthcare field right now means putting yourself at risk for COVID.”
Rosman knows this firsthand. He felt the symptoms in January – he was tired and couldn’t taste his food – after his wife, Dr. Samantha Rosman, an emergency doctor at Boston Children’s Hospital, fell ill. The couple and their children, aged 8 to 10, tested positive for COVID. None became seriously ill.
They don’t know exactly how they were exposed.
“But since March, we haven’t been to a restaurant, we’re not going to a grocery store, we’re not going to any stores,” said Rosman, 44. “Our existence is Instacart and home and work. The only potential point of contact for any of us is work. “
To assess how many hospital employees hired COVID, Globe surveyed the state’s largest hospital systems and academic medical centers, including Mass General Brigham, Beth Israel Lahey, UMass Memorial, Baystate, Wellforce, Boston Medical Center and Boston Children’s Hospital. Steward Health Care did not respond.
Mass General Brigham said more than 5,000 of his workers, or 6.6 percent, tested positive for COVID from the start of the pandemic until the beginning of February, while Beth Israel Lahey said more than 3,000, or 8.5 percent percent had COVID. At BMC, 11.8% of the workforce, or more than 1,000 people, had a positive result for COVID in the same period.
Now, as more health workers receive their vaccines and the spread in the community slows, the rate of new infections is falling.
The state Department of Public Health does not specifically report infections among the hospital’s workforce, but a 2020 law requires the department to track the occupations of people who test positive for COVID. That information was out of date for many months until early February, when, after investigations by the Globe, state officials released new figures that shed light on the types of workers most affected.
State employees counted 4,275 nurses in Massachusetts who tested positive between March 10 and December 31, 2020. During the same period, 3,178 nursing, psychiatric and home health assistants tested positive, as did 499 doctors and 921 medical assistants. The data does not specify whether these medical professionals work in hospitals or other settings.
The death toll is more difficult to determine, although a project by The Guardian and Kaiser Health News contains 74 Massachusetts health workers who died of COVID.
Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that more than 408,000 health professionals have hired COVID, and more than 1,400 have died.
“COVID was the first time I was really afraid to go to work,” said Trish Powers, 58, a longtime nurse at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. For many months, Powers thought of thoughts like “If I’m holding my patient’s hand, will I be sick?” and “Oh my God, did I touch my eye? Did I give myself COVID? “
Their fears were not unfounded. She tested positive for COVID in mid-December, an infection she suspects she contracted in a hospital break room, where employees remove their masks to eat and drink. Hospitals, including Brigham, have designed rest spaces that allow employees to sit 2 meters away when they unmask themselves. But there is still the possibility of transmission.
Powers, who leads the nurses’ union in Brigham and usually spends hours standing in an operating room each shift, has been unemployed for two months, his recovery hampered by cardiac complications and persistent fatigue.
It seems unfair that she got sick despite trying to follow the rules – wearing a mask, washing her hands, avoiding meetings – but she also knows how much worse it could have been. She will never forget the people she saw dying from COVID last spring, when she was sent to the ICU. “You are so lucky to be well,” she tells herself.
Hospital staff who test positive for COVID must stay at home for at least 10 days. But some, like Powers, can be gone for weeks or months, depending on the severity of their illness. This overwhelmed an already stressed workforce.
During the sudden increase in December and January, healthy employees worked extra shifts, skipped holidays and were moved to new departments to meet patient demand, while many of their colleagues were ill with COVID. At Baystate Health, for example, about 450 people were unemployed in mid-December because they were ill with or exposed to COVID.
Despite the large number of hospital staff who hired COVID, hospital staff say most were infected by community exposures, not during their shifts.
When caring for COVID patients, frontline employees wear masks, eye protection, lab coats and gloves – which are largely effective in preventing infection when used properly. Even the team that does not treat patients usually wear masks and eye protection while working.
A growing body of evidence points to the spread of the virus in the community and demographic factors, such as race and postal code, as greater risk factors than someone working in a hospital, he said. Dr. Erica S. Shenoy, associate head of infection control at Massachusetts General Hospital, where more than 2,000 employees have tested positive for COVID in the past 11 months.
The number of health workers infected with COVID peaked in April and again around winter break.
“We saw patterns very similar to what was happening in the community,” said Dr. Helen Boucher, head of infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center, where about 600 employees tested positive for COVID. Boucher said contact tracking indicates that almost everyone acquired their infections outside the hospital.
“Clusters arise when small groups of people get together, usually in people’s homes, let their guard down and transmission occurs. … We are all human and coworkers participated in these meetings, ”she said.
But officials acknowledge that infection groups occur in hospitals all the time – ranging from two or three people in a unit tested positive to much larger outbreaks. An outbreak at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in September infected 57 people.
Lori Pannozzo, a nurse who cares for COVID patients in the intensive care unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Worcester, said she feels exposed because she must reuse masks at work. She believes she was infected by a COVID patient who needed to be intubated quickly, a process that releases respiratory droplets into the air.
Pannozzo was coughing on New Year’s Eve, hours before the ICU appointment time; she tested positive for COVID that day. She started feeling short of breath and developed pneumonia. She spent her sick 48th birthday on the sofa at Monson’s house, which she shares with her husband and son.
Weeks after the test was positive, Pannozzo remained out of work, struggling to breathe while walking short distances.
“I never really had anxiety before,” she said. “I was kind of able to relate to my patients. Not being able to breathe is scary. “
Priyanka Dayal McCluskey can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on twitter @priyanka_dayal.