National Nurses United

the same system's Hyde Park facility, according to information sup- plied by hospital management. "Covid-19 is like no other illness I've had before," said Anita Phillips, a registered nurse who tested positive for Covid-19 after she was exposed at Ingalls Memorial Hospital. "I am committed to returning to work once I recover so I can be there for my patients, but I must be protected. Ingalls needs to clean up its act." T hroughout the pandemic, nurses like Diane McClure have looked on in amazement and wonder that the wealthy, politicians, Hollywood celebrities, and professional and col- lege athletes can get tested for Covid-19 on demand, sometimes daily, but health care workers who save lives cannot find out easily if they have Covid. The most recent NNU survey of RNs found that fewer than one quarter of respondents had been tested for Covid-19. "The fact that players in the NBA or NFL are constantly tested, and nurses and other health care workers are constantly denied tests, sadly highlights our country's priorities," said McClure, a post- anesthesia care RN and a board member of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, an NNU affili- ate. "We value our entertainment, but not preventing human suffering and death among essential workers like me." McClure said she knows countless, first-hand stories of nurses who have been exposed to Covid-19 at work, but been denied test- ing. At her hospital, Kaiser Permanente South Sacramento Medical Center, McClure said management very narrowly defines what counts as "exposure" and refuses to test nurses unless all the criteria are met. Even nurses who do meet the threshold for exposure but aren't showing symptoms are constantly discouraged from testing. "They're always saying, 'No, you don't need to be tested,' or 'You should be fine,'" said McClure. "Well, that's not true. You could be asymptomatic and be transmitting the virus. You would think Kaiser would want to know whether their staff have Covid-19 or not, right? But no. It's beyond ridiculous." Some nurses have paid for private testing or resorted to county testing or outside programs to find out if they have Covid-19 after they were denied by their employers. The denial of testing, and of contact tracing and notification of exposure, is largely abetted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) extremely weak guidance on Covid. Nurses are well familiar with the CDC's cowardly guidance on respiratory pre- cautions for health care workers that allowed hospitals to deny nurses N95-or-better respirators, but since that time, the CDC has continued to weaken or walk back Covid standards. In late August, the CDC said that there was no need to test people for Covid if they were asymptomatic, and only corrected this later after intense pub- lic outcry. CDC guidance inappropriately continues to recommend testing for exposed nurses upon the presence of symptoms. In September, there was a hubbub when the CDC finally publicly issued an updated guidance that Covid-19 was an aerosol-trans- mitted virus but, within a day, retracted its stance, saying the previous communication had been published in error. On Oct. 5, the CDC finally issued a watered-down and carefully worded official version that stated Covid-19 can "sometimes" be spread by airborne transmission but that such cases were special circumstances in 16 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 0 "I have been a nurse for 13 years and have NEVER experienced this, where everyone's safety is at risk because we can't easily retrieve a respirator when we need it."

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