‘LOST ON THE FRONTLINE’

Nearly 3,000 Health-Care Workers Have Been Killed by COVID—Far More Than Official Tally

The majority of the deaths were workers under 60 years old.

Nearly 3,000 health-care workers in the U.S. have died of COVID-19 this year, according to a new report by Kaiser Health News and the Guardian. That’s higher than the official total the U.S. has released. In a third of those cases the health-care workers expressed concern about PPE they received or lack thereof. “The question is where are they becoming infected?” Michael Osterholm, a member of President-elect Joe Biden’s COVID-19 task force said to the Guardian. “That is clearly a critical issue we need to answer and we don’t have that.” The majority of the deaths were people under 60, and 65 percent of the deaths that had data for race and ethnicity were recorded as people of color. The data was collected as part of a project called “Lost on the Frontline” that aims to count every health-care worker killed by COVID. The U.S. recorded 3,401 deaths from virus on Tuesday, the fifth day this month where the death toll has been above 3,000.