Awarding Public Gratitude for Health Professionals During the Time of COVID-19

"She was concerned that I would expose her to the COVID virus and since she was considered a high-risk person, she just couldn't rent the room to me."
"I can absolutely understand her point of view and agree with her concerns. I'm just upset because she chose the day I was supposed to be moving into her home when I've already made all the arrangements and paid her all the money. And now I have nowhere to go."
"I do understand that they're concerned and I would be, too, but as a human being who serves my public and serves my community and puts a lot of life into it, I'm really kind of saddened and upset that I have no place to go and no one to help me."
Ottawa nurse Kathrine Slinski

“I called my friend. I didn’t know what to do. I told [the police officers], ‘I am a nurse. I just got home from work. It’s late'."
"They just said: ‘We don’t care. Your landlord wants you out, and you have to go now'."
"I feel totally humiliated by this experience, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself. I need to be able to go in to work to do my job, completely focused on my patients."
"I told her selfish people die first. If I get the coronavirus, I will share it with her. I know that was wrong and that I shouldn’t have said that. But I was so frustrated and stressed out by this woman."
Toronto nurse Gigi

Gigi, a Toronto nurse who was recently evicted, found support among local politicians after telling her story “so no one else can lose their home like I did.” - Steve Russell/Toronto Star

"DEEPLY ANGUISHED"
"All precautions are being taken by doctors & staff on #COVID2019 duty to ensure they're not carriers of infection in any way."
Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, India

"Going to and from work in my scrubs, I often watch people take two steps back away from me."
"I think the concern is that any health-care provider is contagious themselves."
Chicago nurse

"We see how in Italy a nurse leaves her home to go to work and people applaud."
"But here we see these sad situations."
Fernando Rios Quinones, spokesman, Guadalajara state health department, Mexico

A doctor examining a suspected coronavirus patient in the isolation ward at Patna Medical College and Hospital, on 14 March, without protective gear. As they prepare to confront a wave of COVID-19 cases within an already under-funded public health infrastructure, healthcare workers in various parts of India have raised concerns about the shortage of supplies such as masks, coveralls, gloves, among others, that will protect them from contracting the novel coronavirus.

Santosh Kumar/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

The heroes society salutes at a time of mass terror while a highly infectious, deadly new virus whose properties are still not fully understood but whose toll on people's health and mortality has cut a wide, destructive path through the global community while medical science feverishly works overtime in an effort to find some way to stop it, to control it, a vaccine that will protect populations, have also become the targets of some minority segments of the global population, fearful of being contaminated by health workers they view as carriers, given their proximity to COVID-19 victims.

"We are sure you have corona!" shrieked a woman toward a psychiatrist at a government hospital in western India, as Sanjibani Panigrahi finds the neighbourhood in which she lives viewing her as a threat. "We will not allow you in the building", she has been informed. Health-care workers in some cities are applauded for their self-sacrifice, their dedication to their profession, placing themselves in harm's way in exposure to a virulent threat, and in other places the long hours they pit in as they struggle to save people from the coronavirus effects, gains them suspicion and fear as a carrier.

Filipinos are attacking and eschewing frontline medical workers on misguided fears they carry the lethal coronavirus  Asia Times

Mexican state authorities are concerned enough about this trend so have arranged special buses for nurses. Hospitals urge nurses in parts of Australia, not to wear their uniforms in public, as a way to avoid attacks. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered police to protect health workers in the wake of assaults, one of which saw bleach thrown at a hospital employee's face.

Doctors and nurses worldwide have contracted COVID in the pursuit of their professional duties aiding those stricken with the virus, only to be themselves cut down by its deadly effects. Health workers worry about their patients' plights and do their utmost to help save them, while concerned at the same time of the universal shortage of personal protection equipment for medical personnel, leaving them even more vulnerable to disease transmission.

"I understand people are afraid, but abusing doctors is not OK. We are at risk more than them", stated Ms.Panigrahi. Local police and politicians intervened over the harassment she had suffered and ultimately her neighbours apologized, excusing their behaviour by professing fright over her proximity. In Delhi, a doctors' association wrote to the central government that health workers being evicted by landlords over their work had nowhere to turn to. "Many doctors are now stranded on the roads with all their luggage, nowhere to go, across the country."

In Quezon province in the Philippines, a man shot at an ambulance driver to stop it from entering a subdivision where he was concerned the virus would be spread. The ambulance driver from the Peter Paul Medical Center of Candelaria was transporting hospital personnel, not patients. "Moreover, proper cleaning and disinfection of the vehicle is done on a regular basis", explained the hospital.

People protest the construction of a coronavirus testing center in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on Monday.    Legnan Koula, Shutterstock

A nurse in Chicago informed a local television channel she had been punched in the eye while on a public bus by a man who accused her of spreading the virus. Protesters in Abidjan, Ivory Coast attempted to destroy a coronavirus testing centre under construction. Social media aired videos showed people ripping wood planks off the structure while police fired tear gas canisters. "They want to kill  us" -- one of the rioters told Reuters -- with a treatment facility close to their homes.

Authorities are concerned that such attacks and insults might serve to demoralize health workers. "If we continue to harass them, more of them will quit their jobs, and our health-care system would be in danger", stated Reigner Antiquera, president, Alliance of Young Nurse Leaders and Advocates, in the Philippines.