Nine healthcare workers have been hospitalised with Covid-19 over recent weeks, when more than 260 staff picked up the virus at work.
However, none of the hospitalised workers required admission to intensive care and no deaths were recorded over the four-week period, according to a Health Service Executive (HSE) report.
A total of 1,670 cases among healthcare workers was reported between August 15th and September 11th, or 3.8 per cent of all cases. This is a much lower proportion than in earlier waves of the pandemic; at the start of this year, for example, healthcare workers accounted for more than 11 per cent of all cases for a time.
Hospital Report
Almost 80 per cent of cases were female, reflecting the high number of women in nursing and other health grades.
Healthcare assistants accounted for almost 24 per cent of cases, and nurses for almost 23 per cent. Other grades affected included clerical/admin (8.2 per cent), home care (4.3 per cent) and doctors (4.1 per cent).
By country of birth, more than 72 per cent of cases involved Irish staff, 5.2 per cent were Indian and 4.6 per cent were English.
The figures are contained in an update from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre on healthcare worker cases, the first to be published since the cyberattack on the HSE’s IT systems in May.
Cases in this group rose for most of this period, but have been falling in the last two weeks.
According to the report, 63 healthcare staff acquired the infection from a patient in a healthcare setting during the four-week period and 198 acquired it from other staff. Some 68 cases were linked to travel.
The report does not provide information about the vaccination status of staff. Healthcare workers, along with care home residents, were among the first to be vaccinated from the start of the year. The Government has approved booster shots for care home residents but no decision has been made yet on providing boosters to healthcare staff.
