MEDIA ADVISORY: Health care staff infections up nearly 25% in one month as study on pandemic workers’ trauma released Monday in London

Event Information

Begins: 7 December 2020 @ 10:00 AM

Location: London, ON

LONDON, ON –/COMMUNITYWIRE/– Between the beginning of November and December 4 the number of Ontario health care workers infected with COVID-19 rose by 1,929, nearly a 25 per cent increase.

Researchers of a ground-breaking new study (being released to London and Guelph media on Monday) of health care staff working in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic last spring are urging the provincial government to better protect health care workers to mitigate trauma.

The researchers chronicled (in real time) how front-line workers coped as COVID-19 unfolded. The study also makes key recommendations on what we must do differently as Ontario’s under-resourced health system faces the COVID-19 second wave.

The study’s principal authors Dr. Jim Brophy and Dr. Margaret Keith and co-author Michael Hurley president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions (OCHU) will release their findings and answer media questions on a media conference (remote) December 7.

Brophy and Keith, who are affiliated with the University of Windsor, have previously published two studies on violence in Ontario’s hospitals (2017) and long-term care homes (2019).

Who:  Academic researchers Jim Brophy and Margaret Keith, with Michael Hurley, President of OCHU, the hospital division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Ontario

What:  Media conference (virtual) to release new study on health care workers’ lived experience during the pandemic

Where:  https://bit.ly/hcw-sacrificed

When:  10 a.m., Monday December 7, 2020

-30-

For more information, please contact:

Stella Yeadon, CUPE Communications, 416-559-9300  syeadon@cupe.ca