NHS workers with Long Covid say their pandemic plight is being totally ignored

Health workers claim Scotland is ignoring those affected by Long Covid with gaslighting and discrimination throughout the NHS.

Due to give evidence to the Covid-19 inquiry next week, the Scottish Coalition of Healthcare Workers is calling for Long Covid to be recognised as an ­occupational disease.

And the organisation says its members were “not treated like people” as they battled to save lives in hospitals and care homes.

It says workers in Scotland were not given adequate PPE despite other countries having the correct protection to save cross-infection.

‘There really was no excuse’

One of those giving evidence is former NHS Lothian nurse Cass MacDonald, 48, who now battles with Long Covid. She said: “The lack of correct PPE and the failure to protect staff is the biggest medical scandal since the contaminated blood scandal.

“There really was no excuse for what happened to us as there had previously been exercises to prepare for pandemics. Much was already known about Sars and Mers, so it is reasonable to expect those in charge would be aware of how potentially dangerous Covid-19 would be.

“Nobody could know the level of complications, but we did know about the ongoing situations in China and Europe where healthcare workers were using higher-grade protection and respirators than workers were being given here.

“The effect of the pandemic has been the biggest mass disabling event since the First World War, with healthcare workers one of the most at-risk groups.

“Covid was considered to be a Level 3 biohazard for most of the pandemic, yet we do not believe our employers and government took that into consideration.”

Nursing assistant Neil Alexander, who predicted he would die from Covid because of underlying health problems, lost his life after a patient infected 20 others on the hospital ward.

Neil, 64, and a patient at Woodland View psychiatric unit in Irvine, died three years ago.

More than half of those who developed Long Covid have been left struggling financially; 82% are earning less now, some lost all their income and a third are at risk of losing their homes.

Coalition and ­employment law firm Thompsons Solicitors are calling for tighter health and safety legislation so all workplace-acquired infections are reportable, and for workers to be given high-grade respiratory protective equipment, known as RPE, instead of cheaper, lower-grade protection that fails to stop the spread of Covid-19.

Health workers claim a lack of awareness over Long Covid among employers has left many victims struggling financially as a result of contracting the infection at work, with too many losing incomes and their homes.

About 200,000 Scots suffer from the condition, and the Coalition will tell the inquiry that financial support and compensation – including ill-health retirement, personal injury claims and NHS injury allowances similar to those given to military personnel – should be made available to those who caught Covid-19 at work.

Key workers

In one survey of workers with Long Covid, 81% believed they caught the airborne virus at work, with over half suffering two or three episodes of Covid-19.

Many felt, as key workers, they had been put at an unreasonable level of risk during the pandemic because they were given inadequate PPE and blame poor guidance at both national and local levels.

Workers claim that, when the pandemic struck, normal protocol for airborne viruses was initially implemented across the UK with full RPE provided for healthcare workers caring for patients suspected of, or positive for, Covid-19.

But, when it quickly became apparent that all healthcare workers would need to be protected, the Coalition claims PPE recommendations were rapidly downgraded.

The Coalition’s survey found that more than 80% of their staff were told they did not require the higher-level protection of RPE, despite being in contact with patients suffering Covid-19. And, prior to 2020, 80% had not had the required fitting test for RPE, which is much closer fitting than PPE.

The Coalition’s survey shows 63% claim they couldn’t always access higher grade RPE when needed.

The Office for National Statistics states that the prevalence of Long Covid in the general population is 2.69%. In health workers it is 5.72%.