COVID-19: it happens to nurses too—a case study

SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, has had a global impact at both micro and macro levels, and continues to do so. The pandemic has led to illness, death, and global disruption (Jackson et al, 2020), and the impact on healthcare and front-line workers remains unquantified. The 72nd World Health Assembly designated 2020 as the International Year of the Nurse and Midwife, this was to not only commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, but to also recognise the imperative contribution these professions have made to the health and wellbeing of the world's population (Daly et al, 2020).

It is now apparent that healthcare staff active in caring and treating COVID-19 patients may have been some of the most vulnerable to the disease. Ford (2020) found that England and Wales had the second highest death rate of health professionals who contracted COVID-19 in the world, behind only Russia. One element that has become increasingly apparent is that individuals from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds were overly represented within the rates of those who contracted and subsequently died from COVID-19. It has been estimated that 63% of health and social care workers who died were from BAME backgrounds, which is three-fold more than the proportion of BAME workers in the NHS workforce (Kursumovic et al, 2020). Several factors were found to link individuals of BAME heritage with increased mortality, including lower socio-economic status, social deprivation, vitamin D deficiency, genetics, co-morbid medical conditions and obesity (Khunti et al, 2020).