Ontario’s health-care workers say the government has abandoned them in their desperate, anxiety-ridden struggle to cope with COVID-19.
A small-scale study by two researchers released today suggests the workers are burned out and frightened.
Those interviewed – nurses, personal support workers and others – say they still lack personal protective equipment despite the very real risks they face.
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To date, COVID-19 has sickened close to 9,000 front-line health-care workers and killed 16.
During the first half of the pandemic, nearly one-in-five diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in Canada were in health-care workers, according to the Canadian Institute of Health Information. A top concern, health care workers say, is a lack of protective equipment.
Still, some say they face reprisals for speaking out over working conditions in hospitals or long-term care homes.
The researchers point out that many of the staff are women with no job security.
