Virus hits frontline workers in taxed public health system
As a veteran public health worker, Chantee Mack knew the coronavirus could kill. She already faced health challenges and didn’t want to take any chances during the pandemic. So she asked — twice — for permission to work from home.
She was deemed essential and told no.
Eight weeks later, she was dead.
Mack, a 44-year-old disease intervention specialist, lost her life this spring after COVID-19 struck the Prince George’s County Health Department in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. The coronavirus infected at least 20 department employees, some of whom had attended a staff meeting where they sat close together, union leaders said.
The spread of COVID-19 underscores the stark dangers facing the nation’s public health army — the very people charged with leading the pandemic response.
“We’re the ones called to the fire to do this during an emergency. We are essential. People don’t look at us as first responders, but we are,” said Mack’s co-worker Rhonda Wallace, leader of a local branch of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees who, like other union members, stressed she wasn’t speaking for the health department.
https://apnews.com/018418613ce547e0315b9a1a862c0874?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningwire&pnespid=k7Zo9KhKAA_NNFp1k2m1G5_6QNrTrhun1y0Cs7rG
