Take a look at the picture above.
It is from a protest last week at the White House where representatives from National Nurses United (NNU), the country’s largest nurses’ union placed 88 pairs of white shoes, to represent the healthcare staff who have died because of the coronavirus outbreak.
The number of nurses said to have died in the US from COVID-19 now stands at 91 – the NNU blames inadequate supplies of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the deaths.
In total, over 9,000 US healthcare workers in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – figures that are believed to be an underestimate.
While there are no complete figures on the total number of health and aged care staff infected or dead from the virus worldwide, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) said last week that it believes at least 90,000 healthcare workers had been infected in the coronavirus pandemic.
To give you some perspective, that is the equivalent of the population of Albury-Wodonga on the NSW-Victorian border being infected.
This number could be much higher too.
Using data from 30 countries, the ICN says they have found healthcare workers make up an average of 6% of all confirmed cases of COVID-19, with a range from 0% to 18%.
Put those figures against the 4.259 million infections currently recorded around the world and that is 255,000 healthcare workers that have tested positive – more than the population of Hobart.
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (ANMF) also reports that 301 nurses from 32 countries have died.
A stark reminder of the terrible toll this virus has.
