While healthcare professionals in the U.S. started queuing up for their first coronavirus vaccines on December 14, Esmeralda Campos-Loredo was already struggling for oxygen.
The 49-year-old nursing assistant and mother of two had started experiencing respiratory problems a few days earlier. When the first of her co-workers was taking injections, she was shaking in a tent in the parking lot of a Los Angeles hospital, because there were no medical beds available. When she was out of breath, she had to wait all day for relief because there was a critical shortage of oxygen tanks.
Campos-Laredo died of Covid-19 on December 18, one of at least 400 health workers identified by the Guardian / KHN’s Lost in the frontline investigation who died since the vaccine was made available in mid-December, narrowly losing protection that could have saved their lives.
“I told her to take it, because they are launching the vaccine,” said daughter Joana Campos. “But it was a little too late.”
In California, which became the center of the nationwide increase in coronavirus after Thanksgiving, 40% of all health care worker deaths occurred after the vaccine was distributed to medical staff.
Bar graph showing reported deaths of healthcare professionals in California.
An analysis of the Guardian / KHN’s Lost on the Frontline database indicates that at least one in eight health workers lost in the pandemic died after the vaccine was made available. Unlike California, many states do not require full reports on the deaths of nurses, doctors, first responders and other medical personnel. The analysis did not include deaths reported by the federal government in which the name was not released and several recent deaths that have not yet been detected by the Guardian / KHN may be missing.
The vaccine is now widely available to healthcare professionals across the country and, since mid-January, cases of Covid-19 have been declining in the United States.
Sasha Cuttler, a nurse in San Francisco, has been collecting health data for one of California’s nursing unions. Cuttler was alarmed and discouraged to see the death toll still rising weeks after vaccination became widely available. “We can avoid this. We just need the means to do this, ”said Cuttler, who noted that, almost a year after the pandemic began, some hospitals still lacked adequate protective equipment and adequate personnel. “We don’t want to be health heroes and martyrs. We want a safe workplace. “
Barbara Clayborne, a nurse in Stockton, fell ill the week her colleagues started receiving the first doses of the vaccine.
A union activist who worked at St Joseph’s medical center for 22 years, Clayborne picked up last summer to demand more help for the besieged nurses who treated Covid-19 patients.
Although she worked in what was considered a relatively low-risk postpartum care unit, she was defending her colleagues in the intensive care unit, many of whom were overwhelmed with the number of patients for whom they were responsible.
“We know what it’s like to work a full 12-hour shift and not be able to drink water, sit or go to the bathroom,” Clayborne told the Stockton Record in August. “It has been chaos.”
In mid-December, Clayborne, who had asthma, was exposed to a patient who had not yet been diagnosed with Covid-19, said his daughter Ariel Bryant. She died on January 8.
“She was the best mom and grandma – and she was a great role model for me,” said Bryant, who also became a nurse. Bryant works in an intensive care unit in Southern California – the same type of nurse that his mother fought so hard to protect.
If the vaccine had arrived a few days earlier, it could have saved Tennessee fire chief Ronald “Ronnie” Spitzer and his department’s dispatcher, Timothy Phillips.
Spitzer and his Rocky Top fire department team were called in for a medical emergency on December 11, but were not informed until later that the patient had tested positive for Covid-19. Spitzer, 65, and the fireman who accompanied him caught the virus. A few days later, Phillips also fell ill.
Spitzer, a 47-year-old firefighting veteran, was already hospitalized when his co-workers received the first doses of the vaccine in January, according to police chief Jim Shetterly. Spitzer died on January 13 and Phillips, 54, died a few days later.
Tennessee does not publish statistics on deaths of healthcare workers, but 10 of the 22 deaths of Tennessee healthcare workers identified by the Guardian / KHN have occurred since the vaccine was launched in December.
Shetterly said his city of 1,800 was destroyed by the losses. “Everyone knows everyone here. It is tragic when it hits the nation. But when you are in your city, it really hits your home, ”he said.
Gerard Brogan, director of nursing practice at National Nurses United, said that many hospitals have not adequately planned to be ready for the recent outbreaks, which put exhausted health workers at extra risk.
“When there are more inpatients, there is more chaos in hospitals and it is more difficult for workers to be safe,” he said. During the recent increase, “we had nurses breaking down because of the flow of patients and the emotional and physical burden that affected workers”.
Even after all health workers are vaccinated, he said, health administrators will need to remain vigilant about worker safety.
He said that outbreak preparations, extra safety equipment, personnel contingency plans and facilities such as negative pressure rooms to prevent diseases from spreading to hospitals should be a regular part of preparing for potential future pandemics.
KHN reporters, Shoshana Dubnow and Christina Jewett, contributed to this report