Unions laud California directive urging hospitals test health workers weekly for COVID-19
Labor groups and spouses of medical personnel lauded California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Public Health for new recommendations for routine weekly COVID-19 tests of health care personnel at the state’s general acute care hospitals.
“Weekly surveillance screening is necessary not only to keep the frontline health workers safe and stress-free but also to keep their families safe,” said Irina Okhremtchouk, founder of Med Spouses Unite. Family members “often go unseen, but share much of the burden of constant household routines to keep their children and households COVID-free. Weekly testing will ... allow some normalcy and a peace of mind to our families.”
Sal Rosselli, president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, said: “These new regulations will save lives, dramatically reduce the risk of further outbreaks inside hospitals and help ensure that there are enough healthcare workers to care for patients during the worsening surge.”
While Rosselli and other union leaders referred to the CDPH “All Facilities Letter” as a mandate or regulations, the letter itself characterized the measures as recommendations and guidelines.
Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association, said the CDPH letter contains a “strong recommendation” to general acute-care hospitals and that it comes at an inopportune time.
“The greatest concern about the state’s strong recommendation is really one of timing,” she said. “The timing to do weekly testing of asymptomatic hospital workers at a time when we are ramping up with sick people and those positive people will land in the hospital ... at a time when we know our nursing complement is in short supply.”
Difficulty in running tests swiftly
Some hospitals, Coyle said, are waiting three days to get COVID-19 test results for patients who have come in with the coughing, headaches and shortness of breath associated with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
Labs do not have enough supply of chemicals to run the tests as fast as needed, she said, so hospital leaders are concerned that surveillance testing, used to identify outbreaks, of their personnel is being added to the load when their facilities have not been shown to be sources of outbreaks like the ones at skilled nursing facilities.
The state public health department maintains a dashboard that reports the turnaround — the time from testing to getting results — for individuals seeking COVID-19 testing. For the week of Nov. 15, 59% of people got their test results within a day, 86% within two days and 12% within three to four days. About 2% of those tested wait five days or more.
“We all wish we had enough tests to test everybody all the time,” Coyle said. “If you and your family and all of us could be tested every day, we’d all have greater assurances about safety generally, and that’s important. We simply don’t have the testing supplies and capabilities to be able to do that — not that it may not be ideal, but we simply don’t have those capabilities.”
The CDPH letter also recommended testing:
- Health care personnel with symptoms or those who have been exposed to someone with COVID-19.
- Newly admitted hospital patients, as well as those who are newly symptomatic or who have been exposed to other patients.
However, if a health care worker has had COVID-19, the CDPH letter stated, they do not have to be tested for up to three months.
Hospitals must submit a COVID-19 mitigation testing plan to their local licensing district by Dec. 7, and the department recommends starting testing by Dec. 14.
Coyle noted that health care workers will start receiving two-shot vaccines, each spaced three or four weeks apart, within two to three weeks, but the CDPH letter does not state whether vaccinated employees also should still get routine testing.
Testing requirement ‘a long time coming’
In a statement, Kaiser Permanente stated that it “provides testing for patients upon admission to the hospital and prior to surgeries and procedures. Testing is also available for health care workers as part of a comprehensive employee health program to protect them throughout the pandemic and during this current surge.”
Hospital workers can self-schedule a COVID-19 test by selecting the “essential worker” category at kp.org or by contacting their physician directly, said Kaiser spokesperson Chyresse Hill.
Okhremtchouk, a university professor whose husband is a Sacramento-area physician, said spouses of Kaiser personnel in her group were not aware of any consistent routine testing for nurses or physicians, so they have been taking extraordinary precautions in their households because they have partners working at Kaiser hospitals.
This CDPH measure is long overdue, said Okhremtchouk, noting that it has been discouraging, infuriating and laughable to hear health care personnel called “heroes” even as they are being forced to seek surveillance testing through community programs as a precaution for their families and neighbors.
“There are too many asymptomatic individuals — up to 40% per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — infected with COVID, therefore, vigorous testing of healthcare professionals is necessary to ensure that California hospitals are not adding to the spread of COVID infection in our local communities,” she said.
The California Nurses Association described the new CDPH recommendations as a “tremendous victory for the type of infection control measures they have been demanding since the start of the pandemic.”
“This testing requirement has been a long time coming,” said Cathy Kennedy, a Sacramento-area registered nurse, president of CNA and executive vice president of the affiliated National Nurses United. “We nurses knew this was needed and fought together to make it happen. Now hospitals in the rest of the country just need to do the same to get this virus under control.”
NUHW’s Rosselli described the CDPH recommendations as the strongest in the nation, saying greater emphasis should have been placed on testing long ago.
“We can’t just sit on our hands and wait for a vaccine as COVID-19 cases continue to soar and hospitals fill up,” he said. “Governor Newsom deserves credit for recognizing the urgency of the problem and taking decisive action to finally make hospitals test all workers and patients upon admission.”
This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
