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Business Insider exposé of hospitals refusing sick-pay to RNs that contract COVID on the job features 121 RN member.

May 31, 2020

Nurses who have the coronavirus are fighting their employers to get paid time off: 'Nobody really cares about my safety'

"Ana", an SEIU 121RN member, is featured in the lead of this important story that reveals how hospitals are denying support for RNs that contract COVID at work, by claiming they got sick elsewhere.

Business Insider: For weeks, the only contact Ana, a nurse in California, had with her 4- and 1-year old children was watching them play outside from her bedroom window.

She contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in early April, and had to self-quarantine away from her children and her father for more than a month.

The single mom, a labor and delivery nurse at a hospital with confirmed coronavirus patients, started developing a sore throat and fatigue on April 4. She tested positive for the virus four days later, and immediately told her supervisor she contracted the disease at work. (There were confirmed cases around her unit, and she hadn't gone anywhere other than work prior to testing positive, she told Insider.)

But the hospital administration initially denied that she got sick at work. This kept her from getting workers' compensation, which provides relief for people injured or harmed on the job.

Read more at Business Insider.