Younger female NHS workers may face higher risk

Younger female NHS workers infected with coronavirus may have a mortality rate approximately twice that of their peers who are not-NHS staff, new research suggests.

A group of researchers, which includes Ross-on-Wye GP Simon Lennane and local student Ella Woodman, have looked into the age and sex of those who have died with Covid-19.

The group used data from NHS England describing the age of NHS staff and they calculated mortality rates by age and sex for their own dataset.

They then compared these rates with a comparator dataset of all covid-19 related deaths in England and Wales up until 17 April, published by the Office for National Statistics.

Their analysis suggests younger female NHS workers (aged 15-44) may have a mortality rate approximately twice that of non-NHS employees.

Dr Lennane said one of the reasons to conduct the research was to see whether personal protective equipment made a difference.

“It really does,” he said.

“What we were hearing from Wuhan when it first came out was that the anaesthetists and the people who were seeing patients at highest risk like the people putting them on ventilators and intubating were dying, and we were really worried about it.

“What was odd is that we’ve only now heard of one death of someone in the UK who worked on an intensive care unit and so we were really expecting people in the highest risk environments to get hit hardest and actually it didn’t show anything like it.

“What it looks like is that people on the wards who felt were at lower risk were the ones dying from it.

“So if you are all ready for the virus and are in proper PPE it looks like actually it’s really protective.”

He said it was shocking that the government down regulated the advice on PPE at the start of the pandemic.

“It wasn’t until a few weeks into it that they said everyone should were masks. So we were being told you only wear masks where people are likely to have coronavirus.

“The problem is that people are infectious for a few days before they show symptoms. And what we think happened is lots of people got exposed during that time.”

The group are aware of more than 130 deaths of healthcare workers which continues to increase.

Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff continue to be over-represented at 63 per cent of deaths.

“I was looking at the news one night and all the doctors who had died were of minority ethnic backgrounds and I couldn’t believe it,” Dr Lennane added.

“I started collating the cases and found Tim Cook a professor in Bath. We realised we were doing the same researched and we teamed up.

“Out of that we found that there was lots that came out of BAME deaths it’s the first time. There’s a significant death rate in people who are BAME.”