COVID-positive nurses say they’re being pressured to work while sick, and they’re petrified of infecting patients

Four nurses told Insider their hospitals are pressuring them to come into work shortly after testing positive for COVID-19. JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images

By Allana Akhtar and Aria Bendix
Business insider

A handful of nurses are using TikTok to call out hospitals pressuring them to come to work with COVID-19.Four nurses across the US told Insider they had been told to come into work while sick or risk losing pay.Some nurses said they’re close to quitting after nearly two years of long hours and heightened verbal and physical abuse.

What was once an ill-advised practice is now becoming a common request across US hospitals: Healthcare workers are being asked to treat patients while sick with COVID-19.

In a TikTok video now viewed more than 7.2 million times, April Lynn, an ICU nurse, claimed her hospital cleared her to return to work five days after testing positive for COVID-19, despite still having a cough and severe fatigue. (Lynn did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.)

Four other nurses told Insider that, in the last week or so, they’ve been instructed to come into work with symptomatic COVID-19, or risk losing pay or receiving a formal warning. The nurses said hospital administrators are pointing to new federal emergency guidance that allows healthcare workers to shorten isolation periods as a way to mitigate widespread staffing shortages.

“After almost two years of having to deal with this and having such a high stress job, this is kind of like a kick in the face,” labor and delivery nurse Rachel Pokriva, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, told Insider. Pokriva is due to return to work on Thursday at St. Joseph East in Lexington, Kentucky, despite still suffering intense nausea and fatigue.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s emergency guidance, released on December 23, healthcare workers can return to work five to seven days after testing positive for COVID-19. Isolation time can also be cut shorter than seven days with a negative test “if there are staffing shortages,” the CDC stated.

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