State issues new guidelines for health care workers

MVHS says employees at their facilities may return to work with some symptoms after isolation periods are over.

It's already happened here.

Can they be allowed to work...in hospitals and nursing homes.... while they have the virus?

Newschannel 2's joleen ferris is live outside st.

Elizabeth medical center, to tell us.

Joleen?

Thanks, kristen.

We've heard a lot of concern among healthcare providers that we know, asking if doctors and nurses and other providers will be allowed to work with the virus.

And with good reason.

State health department just issued new guidelines this week.

If it feels like life in the time of the coronavirus is changing by the day, by the hour, even, it's because it sometimes is.

As recently as this past tuesday, the state health department modified and sent to healthcare facilities a set of protocols, dictating the conditions under which healthcare providers who have covid-19 can return to work.

10:34 "to me, it looks like there are certain circumstances under which they can come back to work while they are infected.

Is that not the case?

I think if you read through what those steps are, and you follow those steps, then their infectiousness is going to be very minimal, if at all" to come back to work, a healthcare worker must have maintained 7 days isolation after they got sick, and be fever free for at least 72 hours without fever- reducing medicine, and must have other symptoms improving.

Meaning they can work with symptoms. according to officials with mvhs, this might sound worse than it actually is .

None .

None 12:48 "so they may still have a little bit of congestion or a dry cough, or something like that but many times the body's healing response is longer than the amount of time that the body actually has the virus in it" mvhs has come to that bridge...but they haven't had to cross it, yet 10:12 "we've had one patient, one healthcare provider that has tested positive, they're not back to work yet" perhaps most unsettling-a section, toward the bottom of this communication, that lays out conditions where a facility can ask a healthcare worker with the virus to return to work before the 7 days isolation have elapsed...for example, if they have unique or irreplaceable skills critical to patient care.

> tease 5:30 story the governor is