COVID-19 may have killed 180,000 health workers worldwide, says WHO

A WHO paper estimated that out of 135 million health staff worldwide, “between 80,000 to 180,000 health and care workers could have died due to Covid-19 in the period from January 2020 to May 2021.”

“These deaths are a tragic loss, they are also an irreplaceable gap in the world’s pandemic response,” WHO commented on the data released on Thursday, covering the period between January 2020 and May 2021, according to AFP.

Total known deaths from COVID-19 stood at 3.45 million over the same period.

Workers in clinics and hospitals have been on the pandemic’s front lines since the first COVID-19 cases emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 and, while many are suffering from exhaustion and anxiety, there is little sign that the disease has run its course.

Healthcare workers have been given priority in many countries’ vaccination campaigns. However the unequal distribution of vaccine shots between the high income and low income countries leaded to global average of only two in five health workers are fully vaccinated, the WHO said.

“In Africa, less than in one in 10 health workers have been fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, in most high-income countries, more than 80 percent of health workers are fully vaccinated,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as he called all countries “to ensure that all health and care workers in every country are prioritized for Covid-19 vaccines, alongside other at-risk groups,” reported AFP.

As of September 2021, available data from 119 countries suggests that less than 1 in 10 healthcare workers have been fully vaccinated in the African and Western Pacific regions, while 22 mostly high-income countries reported that more than 80 percent of their staff had been fully vaccinated. A few large high-income countries have not yet reported data to the WHO, noted the UN health agency.

The UN health agency urged governments to strengthen the monitoring and reporting of COVID-19 infections, ill-health and deaths among health and care workers, and create a working environment in which health care workers are protected, as it warned of the danger of burnout, anxiety and fatigue as the virus continues to spread around the world.