Mary Wilson
Well-known member
Thu 26 May 2022 02.00 EDT
Denis Campbell
Britain’s safety at work regulator refused to investigate reports from NHS trusts that 10 frontline staff had died as a result of catching Covid-19 during the pandemic.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) declined to look into at least 89 dangerous incidents that NHS trusts said involved healthcare workers being exposed to Covid, including 10 deaths.
The stance taken by the HSE, which oversees workplace health and safety and can bring prosecutions, is disclosed in freedom of information requests by the Pharmaceutical Journal. It has prompted concern that the regulator is too strict in its definition of workplace harm.
It found that 173 trusts in England submitted at least 6,007 reports about employees’ exposure to Covid-19 in the course of their duties to the HSE between 30 January 2020 and 11 March 2022, under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR).
They included 213 “dangerous occurrences”, which are incidents that have the potential to cause significant harm; 5,753 cases where a staff member had caught Covid-19; and 41 deaths among people who had been exposed to the disease at their workplace.
However, the HSE refused to look into five Covid deaths reported under the RIDDOR scheme by the Yorkshire ambulance service (YAS) because of what it considered a lack of evidence.
The YAS’s response to the Pharmaceutical Journal said that “HSE maintained that the occupational exposure of Covid-19 could not be clearly linked to the workplace as community cases were also highly prevalent at the time”. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/society...staff-covid-deaths?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Denis Campbell
Britain’s safety at work regulator refused to investigate reports from NHS trusts that 10 frontline staff had died as a result of catching Covid-19 during the pandemic.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) declined to look into at least 89 dangerous incidents that NHS trusts said involved healthcare workers being exposed to Covid, including 10 deaths.
The stance taken by the HSE, which oversees workplace health and safety and can bring prosecutions, is disclosed in freedom of information requests by the Pharmaceutical Journal. It has prompted concern that the regulator is too strict in its definition of workplace harm.
It found that 173 trusts in England submitted at least 6,007 reports about employees’ exposure to Covid-19 in the course of their duties to the HSE between 30 January 2020 and 11 March 2022, under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR).
They included 213 “dangerous occurrences”, which are incidents that have the potential to cause significant harm; 5,753 cases where a staff member had caught Covid-19; and 41 deaths among people who had been exposed to the disease at their workplace.
However, the HSE refused to look into five Covid deaths reported under the RIDDOR scheme by the Yorkshire ambulance service (YAS) because of what it considered a lack of evidence.
The YAS’s response to the Pharmaceutical Journal said that “HSE maintained that the occupational exposure of Covid-19 could not be clearly linked to the workplace as community cases were also highly prevalent at the time”. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/society...staff-covid-deaths?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
