Washington
At least 90,000 healthcare workers worldwide are believed to have been infected with Covid-19, and possibly twice that, amid reports of continuing shortages of personal protective equipment, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) said on Wednesday.
The disease has killed more than 260 nurses, it said in a statement, urging authorities to keep more accurate records to help prevent the virus from spreading among staff and patients.
The Geneva-based association said a month ago that 100 nurses had died in the pandemic sparked by the novel coronavirus that emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.
“The figure for healthcare workers infections has risen from 23,000 to we think more than 90,000, but that is still an underestimation because it is not [covering] every country in the world,” Howard Catton, ICN’s chief executive officer, told Reuters Television in its lakeside offices.
The 90,000 estimate is based on information collected on 30 countries from national nursing associations, government figures and media reports. The ICN represents 130 national associations and more than 20 million registered nurses.
Catton, noting that 3.5 million cases of Covid-19 have been reported worldwide, said: “If the average health worker infection rate, about 6 per cent we think, is applied to that, the figure globally could be more than 200,000 health worker infections today.
