The Health Service Executive has defended its record on safety measures to protect staff from contracting Covid-19 after the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation yesterday claimed infection rates of healthcare workers in hospitals were "out of control".
Yesterday, the INMO said that between 6 and 19 January, 5,403 healthcare workers had been diagnosed with Covid-19, with 1,957 confirmed to have contracted the virus in a healthcare setting.
The union called for the use of higher specification FFP2 facemasks in all settings, a two-metre distance between hospital beds rather than the current one metre minimum, along with increased testing and tracing and safety reviews in each hospital.