By Unjay Markiewicz/ Unsplash

The lead article in the March issue of AJN examines the lack of accurate data on deaths from COVID-19 among nurses and other health care workers:

“More than a year after the first SARS-CoV-2 infection was identified in the United States, there is no reliable count of COVID-19 cases or deaths in nurses and other health care workers. The COVID Data Tracker maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 389,380 health care worker infections and 1,332 deaths as of February. Yet, as far back as November of last year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported 1,162 staff deaths in U.S. long-term care facilities alone. Still another list, maintained by the Guardian and Kaiser Health News, has counted 3,258 health care worker deaths, 503 of them among nurses.”

So while praised and touted as “heroes,” those who died might not always have been recognized as casualties of the hazards imposed by their jobs during the pandemic. The report also notes:

“[B]ased on past epidemics and state data, health care workers would be expected to make up an estimated 5% to 15% of COVID-19 infections in the United States. With almost 20 million U.S. cases, that would translate to at least 1 million cases among health care workers, and many thousands of deaths.”

Data matters.

This data is important—not only to recognize those who died, but as the author notes, to understand all the modes of transmission. Was direct care of patients on ventilators more a risk than care of nonventilated patients? Did types of PPE worn influence risk levels, and in what ways? Did reusing PPE—and for how many days—confer a higher risk?

It’s especially important that we make sense of the evidence so that those at the point of care can be better protected in future outbreaks.

The article is free to read in the March News.