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As healthcare workers in the United States began lining up for their first coronavirus vaccines on December 14, Esmeralda Campos-Loredo was already fighting for oxygen.
The 49-year-old nursing assistant and mother of two had started having breathing problems a few days earlier. By the time the first of her colleagues was vaccinated, she was shaking in a tent in the parking lot of a Los Angeles hospital because no medical bed was available. When she gasped, 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 on the frontline investigation who have died since the vaccine became available in mid- December, narrowly lacking the protection that could have saved their lives.
“I told her to stay there, because they are spreading the vaccine,” her daughter Joana Campos said. “But it was just a little too late.”
In California, which became the center of the national coronavirus outbreak after Thanksgiving, 40% of all healthcare worker deaths occurred after the vaccine was distributed to medical staff.
Bar chart showing reported deaths of healthcare workers in California.
Analysis of the Guardian / KHN’s Lost on the Frontline database indicates that at least one in eight health workers lost to the pandemic died after the vaccine became available. Unlike California, many states do not require a detailed report of the deaths of nurses, doctors, first responders, and other medical personnel. The scan did not include federally reported deaths whose names were not disclosed and may miss many recent deaths that have yet to be detected by the Guardian / KHN.
The vaccine is now widely available to healthcare workers across the country and since mid-January, Covid-19 cases have tended to decline in the United States.
Sasha Cuttler, a nurse in San Francisco, collects health care data for one of the California nursing unions. Cuttler was alarmed and disheartened to see the death toll rise again weeks after the vaccination became widely available. “We can prevent this. We just need the means to do it, ”said Cuttler, who noted that nearly a year after the start of the pandemic, some hospitals still lack adequate protective equipment and staff. “We don’t want to be heroes of health and martyrs. We want a safe workplace. “
Barbara Clayborne, a nurse in Stockton, fell ill the week her colleagues started receiving their first doses of the vaccine.
A union activist who had worked at St Joseph’s Medical Center for 22 years, Clayborne went on picketing last summer to demand more help for besieged nurses treating Covid-19 patients.
Even though she worked in what was considered a relatively low risk postpartum care unit, she was an advocate for her colleagues in the intensive care unit, many of whom were overwhelmed by the sheer number of patients they were in. 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 Stockton. Record in August. “It was chaos.”
In mid-December, Clayborne, who suffered from asthma, was exposed to a patient who had not yet been diagnosed with Covid-19, his daughter Ariel Bryant said. She died on January 8.
“She was the best mom and grandma – and she was a great role model to me,” said Bryant, who became a nurse herself. Bryant works in an intensive care unit in Southern California – like the same type of nurse his mother fought so hard to protect.
If the vaccine had just arrived a few days earlier, it could have saved Tennessee Fire Chief Ronald “Ronnie” Spitzer and his department dispatcher, Timothy Phillips.
Spitzer and his Rocky Top firefighters were called to a medical emergency on December 11, but were not told until later that the patient had tested positive for Covid-19. Spitzer, 65, and the firefighter 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 colleagues received their 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 release statistics on healthcare worker deaths, but 10 of the 22 Tennessee healthcare worker deaths identified by the Guardian / KHN have occurred since the vaccine was deployed in December.
Shetterly said his town of 1,800 was shattered by the losses. “Everyone knows everyone here. It is tragic when it hits the nation. But when it’s in your city, it really hits home, ”he says.
Gerard Brogan, director of nursing practice for National Nurses United, said many hospitals had not done adequate planning to be ready for recent outbreaks, putting exhausted healthcare workers at additional risk.
“When there are more patients, there is more chaos in hospitals and it is harder for workers to be safe,” he says. In the recent outbreak, “we had nurses down because of the influx of patients and the emotional and physical consequences that took their toll.”
Even after all healthcare workers are vaccinated, he said, healthcare administrators should remain vigilant about worker safety.
He said surge preparations, additional safety equipment, emergency staffing plans, and facilities such as negative pressure rooms to prevent disease from spreading to hospitals should be an integral part of the plan. preparation for possible future pandemics.
KHN reporters Shoshana Dubnow and Christina Jewett contributed to this report
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