MEDIA ADVISORY: Hundreds of Hamilton health care workers ill from Covid-19 in area outbreaks – lessons not learned: major study to be released in Hamilton Wednesday

Event Information

Begins: 9 December 2020 @ 10:00 AM

Location: Hamilton, ON

HAMILTON, 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 Hamilton media Wednesday, December 9) 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).

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., Wednesday, December 9, 2020

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For more information, please contact:

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