BY definition, those who care for the ill at times of infectious disease carry a higher risk than the rest of the population when it comes to contracting the very sickness they are helping others to fight.
The Spanish flu of 1918 took a deadly toll on nurses, and although infection control measures and personal protective equipment have improved immeasurably since then, front-line health workers again suffered disproportionately during more recent outbreaks, such as Ebola, SARS and the H1N1 influenza epidemic.
Unfortunately, this trend is continuing with COVID-19, as the tolls on health workers in some of the pandemic's global hot spots show only too clearly.
As we remarked here yesterday, something like 10 per cent of those with the coronavirus in Italy and Spain are doctors, nurses. More than a month ago, China had 3300 health care workers when its national toll was 64,000.
Johns Hopkins University global coronavirus dashboard
Although Australia's much smaller case numbers - 3140 or so yesterday, including about 100 in the Hunter - have given the health system time to prepare, our health professionals will be under no illusions as to the risks they are exposed to in serving the community.
As we are reporting today, John Hunter Hospital is battle ready, as are GP surgeries and other medical facilities, in preparation for a coronavirus onslaught that everyone hopes will not eventuate.
Regardless of what happens from here, those tasked with responding to this emergency will perform the same roles - often life-saving, and sometimes heroic - that they did, often without much acknowledgement, before this virus emerged.
Case numbers will rise. That is an epidemiological certainty.
But we, the public, have it in our power to ease the burden on health workers by accepting the alterations to our everyday behaviours that are being imposed to minimise, and hopefully stop, the spread of the virus.
Without a big slowdown of infection rates, further restrictions on movement will likely follow yesterday's announcement of mandatory quarantine, rather than self-isolation, for overseas arrivals. Individual hardships will worsen as the shutdowns, and the job losses, continue.
But all of us whose privations are preventative are in a safer place than the heroes who must head into the eye of the epidemic to treat its victims.
To all on the front lines, our thoughts are with you.
ISSUE: 39,565.
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