Health and Safety Authority investigating 17 Covid deaths among healthcare workers

The HSA, which is tasked with investigating workplace fatalities and accidents, confirmed that investigations were ongoing into the deaths of 17 healthcare staff from Covid-19 but would not comment on any specific cases or employers involved.

The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) has confirmed it is carrying out investigations into the deaths of 17 healthcare workers who may have acquired Covid-19 in the workplace.

The authority, which is tasked with investigating workplace fatalities and accidents, confirmed that investigations were ongoing into the deaths of 17 healthcare staff from Covid-19 but would not comment on any specific cases or employers involved.

“Currently the authority is aware of 17 deaths in the healthcare sector, which were alleged to have been as a result of occupationally acquired Covid-19. 

"The authority’s investigations into these particular cases are progressing and are at various stages of completion,” a spokesperson for the HSA said.

Data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) shows that more than 28,500 healthcare workers have contracted Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, leading to 17 fatalities, 101 intensive care admissions, and 775 hospitalisations. Those who died ranged in age from 30 to 65 years.

The latest HPSC data shows nurses and healthcare assistants represented 49% of all healthcare workers infected between late November last year and mid-April this year and half of infected healthcare staff worked in an acute hospital or nursing home.

Not all infections were contracted in the workplace, however, as 40% were acquired in the healthcare setting, 25% were infected by a close contact, 16% were infected through community transmission, while it was unknown how the virus spread in 17% of cases.

Healthcare staff were significantly impacted in the first and most recent Covid-19 waves although the infection rate is falling since vaccines began to roll out to healthcare and frontline workers in the new year.

The Government has promised to roll out a compensation scheme for the bereaved families of healthcare workers, who died from Covid-19, although details of the scheme have yet to be published.

The scheme was announced last summer by Health Minister Stephen Donnelly who said it would “apply to everybody who is a frontline and hands-on worker” and signalled it would cover locums, staff in HSE-funded Section 38 and Section 39 services, and in nursing homes, who may not be otherwise protected by life assurance schemes.

The HSA also confirmed that investigations were not being conducted into Covid-19 fatalities in any other workplace settings or occupational groups at this stage.

Last year, 53 workplace fatalities across all sectors and from a range of causes were reported to the authority.

In 2020, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation and Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland pressed for work-related Covid infections and deaths to be reported to the HSA as a notifiable workplace injury.

Legislation is currently progressing to amend the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 to facilitate this and ensure that all workplace Covid-19 infections are reported to the authority.

The HSA also confirmed that the majority of 2,691 inspections conducted since January were Covid-19 related and were carried out across all sectors, including healthcare workplaces.