Health care workforce quarantines may be unsustainable

Health care leaders are rethinking the logic of quarantining every health care worker after exposure to the coronavirus. The first documented case of the virus in the United States resulted in more than 200 hospital workers staying home for weeks. As the numbers of cases grows, the number of health care workers designated for quarantine could increase exponentially. “It’s just not sustainable to think that every time a health care worker is exposed they have to be quarantined for 14 days,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. As hospitals take steps to retrain workers on safety protocols, health care leaders such as Nuzzo called for a balance between understanding the changing science around the disease and the need to keep the health care system up and running. (Kaiser Health News story, 3/9/20)