Hospital workers forced to isolate after Covid-19 might not get paid. Really? In Canada?

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly has launched. It's your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions. From Chronicle Companies, organizers of the National Pharmaceutical Congress. More info at pharmacongress.info

⇒ Issue #143 (In numerology, 143 signifies material acquisition and benefitting society.)

⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 12/02: 387,052*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 12/02: 12,229*
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 12/02: 63,995,700*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 12/02: 1,483,227*

December 2, 2020—It’s Wednesday at Chronicle HQ in Etobicoke, Ont., and editorial director Allan Ryan is at the command post today. For the last eight months, the buzz in our office building has been all related to Covid, but last week the storyline took a bit of a twist. The coffee shop on the ground floor, a franchise of a chain founded in the 1960s by a defenseman with the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs, is reported to closing down for renovations for a couple of weeks. Now everyone is wondering where they will have to go to obtain the same courteous, customer-friendly service. Here’s a real-life example: Customer: “Could I have a toasted sesame bagel, please?” Response: “Huh? Do you want that toasted?” But let's get on with the news of the day.

Here’s a revelation: Ontario hospital workers exposed to Covid-19 don’t get paid for their 14-day self-isolation furlough. Jeff Burch, member of provincial parliament for the Niagara Centre riding, thinks this situation is outrageous, and payment to these workers needs to be restored immediately. 

MPP Burch told The St. Catharines Standard newspaper: “I was quite shocked. We found that hospitals are being directed by the minister of health to no longer do straight pay for staff having to be off for self-isolation whether you are showing symptoms or not, whether you have been exposed at work or at home.” The policy change was implemented by the Ontario Ministry of Health in June (previously, hospital workers self-isolating due to Covid-19 exposure were paid), and Burch says he has been receiving complaints from hospital workers who feel they are now being short-changed.

During question period in the Ontario legislature on Nov. 23, Burch said: “This government likes to talk about the hard work done by nurses, doctors, personal support workers and other frontline health care workers, correctly calling them ‘heroes.’ Yet the actions of this government put them in an impossible situation, having to choose between reporting an exposure and feeding their family.”

In Alberta, the situation seems to be similar. In a letter to the CEO of Alberta Health Services, David Harrigan, director of labour relations at the United Nurses of Alberta organization, wrote: “Nurses who are required to self-isolate because of outbreaks in hospitals and long-term care centres are being forced to use sick leave days or take a financial hit. Regular employees are running through their sick leave banks, and casual nurses don’t have access to sick leave, so they are losing income.” As in Ontario, paid leave coverage implemented at the beginning of Covid-19 was cancelled by the provincial government in July.

Some general practice nurses (GPNs) are not receiving full pay across the pond when they need to self-isolate. According to this report in Nursing in Practice, nurses say they have been forced to take sick leave or use vacation time to self-isolate, although in Britain, self-isolation has been a legal duty since September for anyone who reports Covid-19 symptoms or who has been ordered to isolate by the National Health Service’s Track and Trace team. According to the head of the Queen’s Nursing Institute, the organization understands that many of the nurses are employed by private GPs and that their contract terms and conditions vary. Said Dr. Crystal Oldman: ‘This is unacceptable and, in addition to the great harm suffered by the nurses and their families as individuals, it will diminish any efforts to improve recruitment and retention of nursing staff in general practice.”

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The organizers of the National Pharmaceutical Congress are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Mark Lievonen. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma

COVID CHRONICLE 12/02/2020

• Do As I Say Not As I Do Dept.: After advising the citizens of Denver, Colo., to avoid travel on U.S. Thanksgiving to slow the spread of Covid-19, mayor Michael Hancock immediately packed his bags and headed to the airport. He was captured on CCTV at the Denver International Airport, preparing to board a flight to rendezvous with relatives in Mississippi for Thanksgiving. “It was unwise, it was hypocritical, it was a mistake that I deeply regret and deeply apologize for,” a chastened Hancock told Denver’s 9NEWS.
  
• Covid-19 studies should focus more on mucosal immunity, according to a new paper by State University of New York at Buffalo researchers. This paper in the Nov. 30 edition of Frontiers in Immunology emphasizes the mucosal immune system's role, the largest component of the entire immune system plays in the defence against viruses. The authors note that mucosal immunity may be an ideal way to investigate beneficial diagnostic, therapeutic or prophylactic theories.
  
  
• Long-term lung damage has been detected in patients who have recovered from Covid. Although this is not the first time this observation has been reported, a small study (10 patients) from researchers at Oxford University suggests the damage can be detected over three months after the initial infection. A further investigation involving 100 patients is planned. 

WHAT CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON TODAY

The Real World Medicannabis Virtual Symposium hosted by Chronicle kicks off tomorrow evening, Thursday, December 3, 2020, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. EDT with the second session on Saturday, December 5, 2020, from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. EDT. Listen to expert speakers as they discuss the potential therapeutic uses of medical cannabis and explore the role of Real World patient data and evidence. For healthcare practitioners only, including general practitioners, family physicians. nurse-practitioners, specialists, medical students, residents and licensed pharmacists. Register here.

TONIGHT WE ARE WATCHING...

 

Country Music, a film by Ken Burns. This 11-episode series covers the emergence of this style of music in the U.S. and, in predictable Burns-ian technique, interweaves still photos, old home movies, and fresh interviews with country music legends and their families. If you like the Burns approach to storytelling—his films have covered such diverse subjects as the U.S. civil war, baseball, and the Brooklyn Bridge, to name a few—you will find this series pretty darned good. Available on Prime, or better yet, it’s also made available for download to supporters of the Public Broadcasting System in the U.S. 

HOW WAS YOUR WEEK?

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That’s it for now. Publisher Mitch Shannon is back in the driver’s seat tomorrow.