With 1,275,542 confirmed cases globally, coronavirus pandemic is now a full-blown battlefield. While health workers are the soldiers on the front lines, many of them are exposed to contracting the disease on a daily basis. As a result, they have to make hard sacrifices that concern their lives and families.
An emergency room nurse named Devon Nicole Oechsle from Texas is no exception. The woman shared a post about arriving at a heartbreaking decision after talking to her husband Jason, who’s also a firefighter. Devon, full in tears, wrote that they decided to part with their 3.5-year-old child in an effort to avoid passing the Covid-19 on to her. Her post has since gone viral with 216K impressions, making her a hero both as a front-line nurse and as a mom. But she remained humble, “I don’t feel like my job is deserving accolades.”
Image credits: Devon Nicole Oechsle
And this is what she said
Image credits: Devon Nicole Oechsle
With Covid-19 now paralyzing US hospitals, the staffing problems are becoming all the more real. The data from the outbreak in Wuhan, China shows that 15 percent of the 1,700 cases affecting medical personnel were critical, and five died. Meanwhile, 1 in 10 coronavirus cases in Italy were those of health care workers, as reported on March 22.
Labor unions are calling for a safety standard that would require health care employers to create an infection control plan. It would prevent medical staff from being exposed to deadly infections.
According to Public Integrity, the group of representatives sent a letter to OSHA demanding the action for the coronavirus. They stated: “If healthcare workers are quarantined in large numbers, or get ill or die, or fear coming to work due to the risks, it’s not just a workplace problem, it’s a national public health disaster.”
Meanwhile, California remains the only state with a standard to protect health care workers from infectious diseases.
People felt thankful beyond words
