As US health workers began lining up for their first coronavirus vaccines on December 14, Esmeralda Campos-Loredo is already fighting for oxygen.
The 49-year-old nurse and the mother of two children had started having breathing problems just a few days before. When the first of her co-workers was shot, she was shaking in a tent in the parking lot of a Los Angeles hospital because no medical beds were available. When he gasped for air, he had to wait all day for help because there was a critical lack of oxygen tanks.
Campos-Laredo died of Covid-19 on December 18, one of at least 400 medical workers identified by The Guardian / KHN’s Lost on the front investigation, who have died since the vaccine became available in mid-December, missing restricted protection they could have saved their lives.
“I told her to stay there, because she is releasing the vaccine,” said her daughter Joana Campos. “But it was a little too late.”
In California, which became the center of national coronavirus growth after Thanksgiving, 40% of all health care workers’ deaths came after the vaccine was distributed to medical staff.
Bar chart showing deaths of health care workers reported in California.
An analysis of The Guardian / KHN’s Lost on the Frontline database indicates that at least one in eight pandemic medical workers died after the vaccine became available. Unlike California, many states do not require detailed reporting of the deaths of nurses, physicians, first responders, and other nurses. The analysis did not include reported deaths at the federal level in which the name was not released and may miss numerous recent deaths that have not yet been detected by the Guardian / KHN.
The vaccine is now widely available to health care workers across the country and since mid-January, Covid-19 cases have evolved down in the US.
Sasha Cuttler, a nurse in San Francisco, collected health care data for one of California’s health care unions. Cuttler was alarmed and discouraged to see the number of deaths still rise weeks after vaccination became widely available. “We can prevent this. We just need the means to do that, “said Cuttler, who noted that almost a year after the pandemic, some hospitals still do not have adequate protective equipment and staff.” We don’t want to be heroes and “Martyrs in health. We want a secure job.”
Barbara Clayborne, a nurse in Stockton, became ill the week her colleagues began receiving the first doses of the vaccine.
A union activist who worked at St Joseph’s Medical Center for 22 years, Clayborne picketed last summer to ask for more help from nursing nurses treating patients with Covid-19.
Although she worked on what was considered a low-risk postpartum care unit, she advocated for her colleagues in the intensive care unit, many of whom were overwhelmed by the number of patients they were responsible for.
“We know what it’s like to work a full 12-hour shift and not be able to drink water, sit down or go to the bathroom,” Clayborne told Stockton Record in August. “It was chaos.”
In mid-December, Clayborne, who had asthma, was exposed to a patient who had not yet been diagnosed with Covid-19, said her daughter Ariel Bryant. He died on January 8.
“She was the best mother and grandmother – and she was a great role model for me,” said Bryant, who became a nurse herself. Bryant works in an intensive care unit in Southern California – because the same type of nurse fought so hard for her mother to protect her.
If the vaccine had come a few days earlier, Tennessee’s fire chief, Ronald “Ronnie” Spitzer, and his department’s dispatcher, Timothy Phillips, could have been saved.
Spitzer and his crew at the Rocky Top fire department were called to a medical on Dec. 11, but were not told until later that the patient had tested positive for Covid-19. Spitzer, 65, and the firefighter who accompanied him came down with the virus. A few days later, Phillips also fell ill.
Spitzer, a 47-year veteran of firefighters, was already hospitalized when his colleagues received the first doses of the vaccine in January, according to police chief Jim Shetterly. Spitzer died on January 13, and Phillips, 54, died a few days later.
Tennessee does not publish statistics on deaths of health care workers, but 10 of the 22 deaths of health care workers in Tennessee identified by the Guardian / KHN have occurred since the vaccine was launched in December.
Shetterly said his city of 1,800 was shattered by losses. “Everyone knows everyone here. It is tragic when it strikes the nation. But when it’s in your city, it really happens, “he said.
Gerard Brogan, director of the nursing home for National Nurses United, said many hospitals had not done proper planning to prepare them for recent surges, which puts exhausted health workers at additional risk.
“When there are more patients, there is more chaos in hospitals and it is harder for workers to be safe,” he said. During the recent increase, “we had nurses who gave up due to the influx of patients and the emotional and physical burden that affected workers.”
Even after all health workers have been vaccinated, he said, health administrators should remain vigilant about worker safety.
He said preparations for surges, additional safety equipment, emergency personnel plans and facilities, such as rooms with negative pressure to stop the spread of the disease in hospitals, should be a regular part of preparations for future pandemics.
KHN reporters Shoshana Dubnow and Christina Jewett contributed to this report