The Effects of Covid-19 on Healthcare Workers and Requirement for Occupational Healthcare

Abstract

Health-care workers are crucial to any health-care system. During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, health-care workers are at a substantially increased risk of becoming infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The essentials of a viable Occupational Health Service within the healthcare system fundamentally comprise two critical components – a clinical service and an administrative occupational health governance / policy structure. Health-care workers could acquire SARS-CoV-2 at work through direct or indirect contact with infected patients or other health-care workers, or as a result of ongoing community transmission. Community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is targeted by public health measures, whereas infection by patient or health-care worker contact is primarily addressed by facility-based infection prevention and control measures. Available guidance can become rapidly unsuitable when the situation at the frontline of health-care delivery is continuously changing. Therefore broad recommendations need to be translated into locally applicable and pragmatic solutions.