Lessons From COVID-19 for Protecting Workers in the Next Pandemic

Posted in COVID-19, Senior Living

Mary Madison, RN, RAC- CT, CDP
Clinical Consultant – Briggs Healthcare

I am a fan of post-incident analysis … looking in the rear-view mirror when we’re moving away from a crisis. Consider such analysis as also learning from what we’ve experienced so it doesn’t happen again. Here’s an op-ed that I believe all of us should consider as we move forward: Lessons From COVID-19 for Protecting Workers in the Next Pandemic.  This was published June 16, 2023 in JAMA. It’s well worth the read.

Here’s the opening paragraph:

“COVID-19 is an occupational disease that sickened and killed countless workers in health care and long-term care, and in meat processing, agriculture, warehousing, transportation, corrections, and other “essential” industries. Nonetheless, COVID-19 has rarely been treated or tracked as an occupational disease by public health agencies, particularly in non–health care workplaces. The lessons from the failure to protect workers during the COVID-19 pandemic can be helpful as the nation anticipates and prepares for the next public health emergency.”

Spoiler alert … I’m providing the key lessons learned but only briefly. Keep reading – there’s a lot packed in this piece.

  1. Prevent potentially infectious people from entering the workplace.
  2. Use engineering controls to improve ventilation, filtration, and disinfection to reduce the presence of the airborne virus. Do so now.
  3. Worker protection efforts must be strengthened.
  4. Reduce crowding and maintain distance between people.
  5. Employers must be prepared to respond quickly in the event of a national emergency.
  6. In the future, worker protection cannot be relegated to OSHA alone; we need to greatly strengthen the overall workplace protection infrastructure.

“We have an opportunity to learn from the successes and failures of public health efforts to protect workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and build a more robust response to future pandemics. We must encourage and empower OSHA and state and local agencies to craft protective pandemic policies that give workers and employers the tools to create safe and healthy workplace