Four months into a worsening pandemic, there are still no requirements in place to regularly test and monitor most healthcare workers to determine if they have been infected and could be spreading COVID-19 inside or outside their facilities. Not only are caregivers at hospitals, correctional facilities and home health agencies not regularly tested for the coronavirus, they are often denied tests even after their employer has informed them that they have been exposed.

The National Union of Healthcare Workers is proposing a testing regimen for caregivers and patients in California following COVID-19 outbreaks in multiple hospitals, including one that infected more than two dozen caregivers and claimed the life of a nurse. In other cases, one worker was denied a test even though he lived with family members who had tested positive and another worker had to pay to get herself admitted into her hospital's emergency room in order to obtain a test. Both workers ultimately tested positive.

"Our priorities are completely warped," NUHW President Sal Rosselli said. "How can it be that in order to safely play NBA basketball and Major League Baseball games players have to be tested at least every other day, but most of the workers caring for people with COVID-19 can't get a test? These are billion-dollar healthcare organizations. They have no excuse not to be testing the workers whose health they are failing to protect."

Only nursing home workers in California are required to be regularly tested for COVID-19. And that's only because the California Department of Public Health, at the direction of Gov. Gavin Newsom, in May established requirements to test caregivers once a month in facilities with no infections and weekly at facilities with either COVID-19 positive patients or staff.

NUHW is proposing CDPH's testing regulations for nursing homes be extended to correctional facilities and is proposing a modified version be extended to healthcare workers at inpatient facilities and home health agencies.

The union's plan would require:

1. Routine testing of caregivers so that every worker is tested at least once per month.

2. Caregivers to be tested whenever they are potentially exposed to the coronavirus, such as not wearing adequate PPE when treating a patient who is later determined to have the virus.

3. All newly admitted, re-admitted, and newly treated patients to be tested for COVID-19 to lower the risk of spread to caregivers and other patients.



"We couldn't get the hospital to test us or our patients until it was undeniable that the virus was spreading through through our facility," said Brenda Alexander, a respiratory therapist at Kindred Hospital Brea, where an outbreak left 40 percent of patients infected as well as 27 caregivers, including a nurse and a patient who ultimately died from COVID-19. "Testing shouldn't be a last resort. It should be a preventative measure at every hospital to protect the health of patients and caregivers."

The need for testing workers has grown more acute given that state and federal authorities have relaxed infection control regulations amid continued shortages of PPE, including N95 masks. Moreover, many workers are told to stay on the job and get tested through county health agencies, even though it can often take a week to get the results, while the turnaround time for most hospitals is less than 24 hours.

"When my coworker started showing symptoms of COVID-19, our hospital refused to test her," said Stephanie Hurley, a phlebotomist and union leader at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. "We had to work with a doctor to get her admitted into her own hospital, so she could have a test, which was positive."

"My coworker told management that the family members he lived with had tested positive for COVID-19, but was denied a test and ordered to continue working," said Joshua Jesus, a medical technician at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital in Orange County. "He ended up testing positive, and we became severely understaffed because six of my co-workers had to self-quarantine."

Fountain Valley is owned by Tenet Healthcare, a Fortune 500 corporation, that has reported a $2.2 billion cash reserve in addition to receiving approximately $500 million in federal stimulus funds. Providence St. Joseph Health, which owns Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and has also received $500 million in stimulus funds, is the third largest Catholic hospital chain in the country with $12 billion in cash reserves.

"We're putting our health on the line to care for people during a pandemic," Jesus added. "It shouldn't be too much to ask for our employer to give us the piece of mind of knowing whether we are infected and possibly putting our families and our coworkers at risk."

The National Union of Healthcare Workers is a member-led movement representing 15,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawaii.