- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said health care workers could quarantine for less than seven days following a positive COVID-19 test if there are staffing shortages.
- Some healthcare workers are hesitant about returning to work too soon and potentially putting themselves and patients at risk.
- National Guardsmen have been deployed across the country to try and support severe hospital staff shortages.
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised its quarantine recommendations for health care workers, some are struggling to exercise caution while also continuing to support their hospitals.
, the CDC said health care workers that contract COVID-19 and are asymptomatic can return to work after seven days following a negative test, but that isolation period could be shortened if there are staffing shortages.
And staffing shortages are currently rampant, with more than 25 percent of hospitals in 13 states struggling with critical shortages of nurses, doctors and other medical staff, . One hospital in Florida was even because so many hospital staff had contracted COVID-19, contributing to a severe staffing shortage.
Some health care workers have found themselves in a precarious position, uncomfortable with a shorter quarantine period but also well aware of the dire staffing shortages their workplace is experiencing.
Melody Butler, a registered nurse in New York, that after testing positive for COVID-19 and spending eight days at home, she returned to work still feeling fatigued. Her hospital didn’t force her to come back to work right away but she said, “I know how tight staffing is right now. I’m very well aware of how many people are out sick.”
Butler emphasized that the new policy allowing health care workers to shorten isolation periods following a COVID-19 infection will pressure health care workers to come back to work sooner than they’re physically ready to.
“It’s really important that they do listen to their body and make sure they are meeting the criteria to return to work,” Butler told NBC.
Franklin Rosenblat is an infectious disease doctor in Michigan who has been fielding concerns and questions from hospital staff regarding quarantine periods. He told NBC, “I think the main fear is always for our patients. Nurses especially have a tight bond with their patients, and they want to make sure that they’re not putting the patients at risk, so that anxiety is really something that I have to respect because they have a patient’s best interest foremost in their mind.”
Back in September of last year, even before omicron was declared a new variant of concern, the to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra calling for the White House to acknowledge and take concrete action to address the crisis-level nurse staffing shortage.
“The nation’s health care delivery systems are overwhelmed and nurses are tired and frustrated as this persistent pandemic rages on with no end in sight,” the group wrote.
That’s the same situation currently facing the health care system now, as it’s flooded with a record number of COVID-19 patients, with Johns Hopkins University of Medicine in the U.S. just this week.
Though the federal government has deployed the National Guard across the country to compensate for health care worker shortages, like in Ohio where more than one thousand crushed by staffing shortages.
However, the future of the health care industry isn’t looking up either, with Mercer, a national consulting firm, estimating that by 2025 the . The group says home health aides, nursing assistants, medical and lab technicians and nurse practitioners will all face shortages in the thousands.
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