By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – With about 500 new cases of Covid-19 reported in the last 2 weeks in Clallam County, mostly due to the emergence of the omicron variant, health care workers are once again feeling the crush of new covid patients and testing.
Jennifer Burkhardt, OMC’s Chief Human Resources Officer, says it comes at a time when their medical staff is already reduced by about 10%, largely because of their own breakthrough infections and quarantining.
“Today, we have 160 employees who are affected by covid. So, given that we have about 1,650 employees, that’s approximately ten percent of our workforce that’s affected by this new variant. And we are seeing that we’re at levels of staffing shortages that we haven’t seen since our peak of the Delta variant back around Labor Day.”
Burkhardt says their own experience at OMC appears to bear out the evidence that suggests the omicron variant is less severe but far more transmissible.
“There’s no question that the transmissibility of Omicron appears to be greater as it spreads through various departments at OMC. So, we’re seeing just a really, kind of, staggering effect on the shortage of staff.”
This week the CDC lowered the recommended isolation and quarantine times from 10 days to 5, based on cumulative data on how long infected people were most contagious. But Burkhardt says, at OMC, they’re sticking with the previous policy for now.
“Even though the CDC has guidelines out with some new standards, we’re taking time to make sure that we have antigen testing in place, as well as PCR testing for employees. And we haven’t changed our return-to-work standards, as far as the number of days of isolation yet, but we’re doing everything we can to balance getting staff back to work, as well as keeping OMC absolutely as safe as possible and taking all precautions.”
Burkhardt says OMC has nearly 250 open positions in all departments. Openings are posted at olympicmedical.org/careers.