Editorial comment on: Global burden of COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare workers

From the Editor:

This is an important paper but from my personal observations of how we are handling the pandemic in hospitals, it is perhaps not the risk of dealing with the patients that is the problem. In my institution, we have been fortunate to have sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) and we are well protected when entering the ward environment. However, wearing PPE is uncomfortable and it is disposed of on leaving the patient's room. Staff then congregate at the nurses' station and in the offices, where it is impossible to observe social isolation. I believe that the main threat to healthcare workers its other healthcare workers! We have had ward-based outbreaks with staff all contracting the virus simultaneously, presumably from an asymptomatic carrier in the workplace. This issue needs to be urgently addressed.