Early in the pandemic, nurses were celebrated as heroes, with nightly symphonies of clapping or banging pots and pans. Now, many are being asked to go into work despite positive Covid tests — or they say they are being told they must use their vacation and sick days to stay home when they contract the coronavirus.

“You’re talking about a group of people who sat at bedsides — not one a night, multiple, because we were consistently losing people. We were holding the iPads as people said their last goodbyes,” said Ana Bergeron, a registered nurse who is the president of a local union affiliate. “I can’t tell you how sick it makes me now being called a hero, because that’s not how we’re being treated by our employers.”​​

US hospitals letting infected staff members stay on the job | AP News Hospitals around the U.S. are increasingly taking the extraordinary step of allowing nurses and other workers infected with the coronavirus to stay on the job if they have mild symptoms or none at all. AP NEWS

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The move is a reaction to the severe hospital staffing shortages and crushing caseloads that the omicron variant is causing.