■ PA­HO warns that re­cent surge in COVID-19 cas­es has over­bur­dened strug­gling sys­tems. Coun­tries must ur­gent­ly in­crease staff and train­ing and pri­or­i­tize health care work­ers for vac­ci­na­tion ■

Wash­ing­ton D.C., (PA­HO) – While cas­es of COVID-19 fell by a third in the Amer­i­c­as this week, health care work­ers con­tin­ue to face chal­leng­ing con­di­tions due to sys­tems that are un­pre­pared to sup­port them, the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion Di­rec­tor Caris­sa F. Eti­enne said dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing to­day. 

“When cas­es surge ex­po­nen­tial­ly, as they have in the past few weeks, the bur­den falls most­ly on the peo­ple that pow­er our health sys­tems,” Dr. Eti­enne said. “For them, there is noth­ing mild about this Omi­cron wave.”

With in­fec­tions reach­ing 4.8 mil­lion (a 31% drop from last week) but 33,000 new deaths, the PA­HO Di­rec­tor said that the re­gion re­mains in the grip of the lat­est COVID-19 wave and urged coun­tries to har­ness the lessons learned from the pan­dem­ic so far as clin­ics and hos­pi­tals once again be­come full.

“Years of un­der­in­vest­ment in our health ser­vices, ag­ing in­for­ma­tion sys­tems and poor la­bor con­di­tions made our health work­ers’ jobs chal­leng­ing,” the Di­rec­tor said, high­light­ing that these dis­ad­van­tages were on­ly ex­ac­er­bat­ed by COVID-19. 

A PA­HO study launched this week shows that over the course of the pan­dem­ic, doc­tors, nurs­es, and oth­er front­line health work­ers saw more pa­tients, worked longer hours, and suf­fered high­er rates of COVID-19 in­fec­tion.

In some coun­tries, such as Ecuador and Bo­livia, more than 10% of health care work­ers got COVID-19, and many oth­ers lacked ac­cess to suf­fi­cient per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment (PPE).

This has led to “el­e­vat­ed rates of de­pres­sive symp­toms, sui­ci­dal think­ing, and psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress,” the Di­rec­tor said.

En­sur­ing ac­cess to PPE and pri­or­i­tiz­ing health care work­ers for vac­ci­na­tion are crit­i­cal to ad­dress­ing these is­sues and en­abling them to do their jobs safe­ly.

“Now more than ever, we must en­sure health work­ers are pro­tect­ed with life­sav­ing COVID-19 vac­cines and re­ceive pri­or­i­ty for vac­cine boost­ers, where avail­able,” Dr. Eti­enne said.

The Di­rec­tor cit­ed poli­cies like haz­ard pay and life in­sur­ance, as well as reg­u­lar test­ing, and tran­si­tion­ing preg­nant and old­er staff to telemed­i­cine work, as strate­gies coun­tries can ap­ply to pro­tect health care work­ers.

“In­vest­ing in our health work­force should not be some­thing coun­tries on­ly do dur­ing an emer­gency,” she said, adding that an in­vest­ment in our health work­force is “an in­vest­ment in all of us.”

Turn­ing to the COVID-19 sit­u­a­tion in the re­gion, the PA­HO Di­rec­tor said one trend stands out: “Coun­tries with high­er vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age are see­ing low­er ICU ad­mis­sions and deaths.”

She al­so re­port­ed that in North Amer­i­ca, new in­fec­tions and deaths de­creased in all three coun­tries.

In­fec­tions are al­so slow­ing down in Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca, but deaths con­tin­ue to rise in these ar­eas. Hos­pi­tal­iza­tions are al­so ris­ing in most South­ern Cone coun­tries.

In the Caribbean, with the ex­cep­tions of St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines and Do­mini­ca, which has seen a spike in new in­fec­tions, cas­es have be­gun to slow down. Deaths, how­ev­er, con­tin­ue to climb.