Nurses Question Hospitals’ Claims They’re Contracting COVID-19 In The Community Instead Of At Work

Over the past several months, hospitals have repeatedly said contact tracing shows the doctors, nurses and other health care workers who’ve acquired COVID-19 are largely being infected through community spread.

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Leaders from the Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth and University Hospitals made those assertions during a Nov. 16 news briefing where they announced that hundreds of health care workers and other hospital employees were sidelined due to the virus. The claim has also been repeated by leaders from other Ohio hospitals who’ve appeared at Gov. Mike DeWine’s coronavirus briefings.

Yet those assertions have puzzled and disheartened nurses who are at the front lines of the pandemic.

They question how hospitals can pinpoint where they acquired a virus that is so widespread, and they contend it’s just as likely they were infected while treating COVID-19 patients. Furthermore, nurses feel that suggesting they’re getting the virus through community spread insinuates they’re being careless once they’re off the clock.

“Every time someone from a hospital is talking, they seem to want to throw in that this is all community spread, that health care workers are not getting [COVID-19] in the hospital,” said Brandon Marlow, a labor representative from the Ohio Nurses Association. “It just seems very curious, why it’s a consistent message they feel they need to give.”

Marlow said he isn’t sure why hospitals continue to say employees are being infected outside of work. He assumes it could be related to liability reasons, and said several hospitals have made the same assertions in private meetings with the ONA.

However, several of Cleveland’s largest health systems said they are offering paid leave to employees who contract COVID-19 without requiring them to use vacation or paid time off.

Data on the topic is scarce, although one study published in The Lancet found frontline health care workers were at higher risk for contracting COVID-19 than the general community.

Doug Meredith, an ICU nurse at Cleveland Clinic Akron General, said health care workers who are around coronavirus patients every day know the severity of the virus and take precautions to protect themselves outside of work. He said it’s discouraging to hear hospitals suggest employees are getting infected elsewhere.

“I think [nurses] do take it personally. They do feel like their professionalism is being questioned, because of what they do outside of work,” he said. “Because I think we all try to do the right thing.”

Hospitals in Cleveland said they trust their employees and do not believe they’re being careless in the community. Instead, they feel the high number of employees who’ve contracted the virus is the result of a spike in infections across Ohio.

“Our caregivers are highly professional, and contracting COVID-19 outside the hospital is not a reflection of their professionalism, but a reflection of how contagious this virus can be in the community,” a UH spokesman said.

How do they know?

Hospitals say they’ve been conducting contact tracing when an employee tests positive for COVID-19 to identify the source of infection. Leadership for the Clinic, MetroHealth and UH said during the Nov. 16 news briefing that the rise in infections among employees largely mirrored the spike in coronavirus cases in Northeast Ohio.

But the ONA is skeptical the hospitals can truly identify where and when someone was infected, Marlow said. Even though employees are wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) and taking other precautions in the hospital, there’s still a risk they’re being exposed.

“What [hospitals] would like to say is that because all these measures are in place, there’s no way somebody could be getting it in the hospital,” he said. “And I don’t know if that’s a conclusion a reasonable person could come to.”

Marlow said the ONA has repeatedly asked for data that shows employees are being infected in hospitals but has yet to receive any such proof. The Clinic, MetroHealth and UH did not provide any specific contact-tracing data to cleveland.com.

UH said roughly 4.5% of its caregivers have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. That compares favorably to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 13.4% of U.S. health care workers have tested positive. Less than 1% of the UH cases have been linked to exposure at work, a spokesman said.

All three health systems have said they’ve conducted robust contact tracing and have protocols in place to protect employees, such as temperature checks for visitors, mask requirements and social-distancing measures.

Meredith has not tested positive for COVID-19, but some of his colleagues have. He said he’s not aware of any contact tracing that took place after those exposures.

Nurses are already dealing with skeptics in the community who claim the virus isn’t that serious and the pandemic is overblown. So it’s frustrating to hear hospitals tell nurses that they’re acquiring it outside of a workplace where they’re constantly interacting with COVID-19 patients, Meredith said.

“It’s kind of like you’re hearing it from both ends, and you’re stuck in the middle,” he said. “Sometimes you feel like you’re completely on your own.”

The liability question

Earlier this year, Democratic lawmakers in Ohio’s House of Representatives sought to address the issue of workplace liability through H.B. 573, which proposed making COVID-19 an occupational disease under the workers’ compensation law. Rep. Lisa Sobecki of Toledo and Rep. Kristin Boggs of Columbus introduced it March 23, the same day Ohio’s stay-at-home order went into effect.

Yet the bill never got a hearing after being referred to the House Insurance Committee on May 5. Sobecki said she isn’t sure why it failed to gain any traction, although the state’s Republican lawmakers have consistently pushed back on any legislation surrounding the coronavirus and even sought to strip DeWine’s authority to issue statewide public health orders.

Sobecki said she’s unaware of any outside lobbying to prevent the bill from becoming law. But she said she heard from constituent groups who supported the legislation, and feels it’s important for Ohio to stand behind the essential workers who’ve put themselves in harm’s way throughout the pandemic.

“We haven’t seen bills that help everyday Ohioans in the middle of a pandemic,” she said. “It really saddens me.”

She plans to reintroduce a new version of HB 573 once the Ohio Legislature begins a new session in 2021.

“This is not going to go away. The pandemic doesn’t stop on Dec. 31,” Sobecki said. “This pandemic is going to continue until we can get the vaccine to Ohioans.”

Cleveland health systems said they’ve nevertheless taken steps to support employees who contract COVID-19. The Clinic is giving its employees paid time off if they contract COVID-19, regardless of where they’re infected. Those employees are not required to dip into their own PTO, a Clinic spokeswoman said.

“There’s a lot of positive things [the Clinic] is doing as well, to try to take care of workers who are off with COVID,” Meredith acknowledged.

UH employees who acquire COVID-19 at work qualify for workers’ comp. If they’re infected through community spread, they may use the health system’s leave and short-term disability programs, a UH spokesman said.

Marlow said other Ohio hospitals have similar programs in place to help employees. Those efforts are appreciated, but the ONA also wants hospitals to provide robust contact-tracing data and give more weight to the possibility employees are being infected at work.

“I think what makes the most amount of sense is to not pretend once you walk into a hospital, it’s a magical place where it’s no longer the community and you can no longer contract the virus,” Marlow said.

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