Infected and yet at work: hospitals want to be able to deploy staff with omikron too | Inland

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The absence of healthcare workers with a corona infection is a major concern for both UZ Gent and UZ Brussel. There is not always a replacement for staff who drop out. In the event of force majeure, infected employees should still be able to continue to work in the event of an overflow by the omikron variant, according to UZ Gent and UZ Brussel. “Keeping enough staff will be a much bigger problem than a possible flooding,” Dominique Benoit, head of Intensive Care UZ Gent, tells our editorial team.

“Instead of switching to a triage of patients, in a force majeure situation we should first switch to deploying staff who have tested positive, unless it concerns people with a weaker immunity,” Benoit explains to Het Nieuwsblad.

Benoit says that deploying infected staff can ensure that there is no need to choose who can or cannot be cared for. “Anyone who tests positive must currently stay at home. That is absurd in the event of force majeure, because many are able to work. If a patient comes in who was involved in a serious traffic accident and is in life-threatening condition, but who cannot be helped due to staff loss, then this patient would rather be cared for by an infected person than not at all,” said Benoit.

Representatives of employers and employees in the private sector will develop guidelines in the coming days for major staff loss due to a corona infection.

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