One-third of COVID nurses' deaths in the U.S. are Filipino Americans

Of the 213 registered nurses who have died of Covid-19, 67, or about 31%, are of Filipino descent, according to a report by the National Nurses United.

The deaths of Filipino and Filipino American nurses are alarming high because they only make up 4% of RNs in the United States.

The NNU report, Sins of Omission: How Government Failures to Track Covid-19 Data Have Led to More Than 1,700 Health Care Worker Deaths and Jeopardize Public Health, condemns the failure of federal and state governments to track and publicly report transparent, accurate, and timely data on the Covid-19 pandemic.

In California, where about 20 percent of nurses identify as Filipino, they account for nearly 70 percent (11 of the 16) COVID-19 deaths, according to the California Nurses Association.

Nurses of Filipino descent are more likely to work in higher-risk roles within hospital systems, such as the intensive care unit, emergency medicine or telemetry units, where high-risk patients are under constant electronic monitoring — putting them directly in the path of COVID-19, said Catherine Ceniza Choy, PhD, a professor of ethnic studies at University of California, Berkeley.

"Filipino nurses, here specifically in the U.S., are concentrated specifically in inpatient critical care services," Choy told the Mercury News. "Many of them are also caregivers at home, not only of children, but also their parents and other elders. And so part of the problem with the pandemic is these multiple layers of vulnerability and exposure."

The Sins of Omission report researched and confirmed the deaths of more than 1,700 health care workers. The report includes a list of the known names of 213 registered nurses who died of Covid-19 as of Sept. 16, as well as the known names of 617 additional health care workers.

Highlights of the report, as of Sept. 16, 2020, include: 

» At least 213 registered nurses have died of Covid-19 and related complications. » 124 (58.2 percent) of the 213 RNs who have died of Covid-19 and related complications are nurses of color, reflecting the broader disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on communities of color in the U.S.1 Just under one quarter (24.1 percent) of registered nurses in the United States are people of color.2 

» 67 (31.5 percent) of the 213 registered nurses who have died of Covid-19 and related complications are Filipino. Filipinos make up 4 percent of registered nurses in the United States.3 More than half of registered nurses of color who have died to date have been Filipino (54.0 percent). 

» 38 (17.8 percent) of the registered nurses who have died of Covid-19 and related complications are Black. Black nurses make up 12.4 percent of RNs in the United States.4 Nearly one-third of RNs of color who have died to date have been Black (30.6 percent). 

» At least 1,718 health care workers, including registered nurses, have died of Covid-19 and related complications. » Of the 1,515 health care workers, including registered nurses, for which facility information is available, 448 (29.6 percent) worked in hospital settings and 1,067 (70.4 percent) worked in nursing homes, medical practices, for emergency medical services (EMS), and in other care settings. 

» Nearly one-third of the hospital health care workers who have died were registered nurses: 143 (31.9 percent) of 448 total. 

» There are at least 258,768 cases of Covid-19 infection in health care workers, 166 percent of the 156,306 cases reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

NATIONAL NURSES UNITED 

“All of my nurses are amazing, but Filipino nurses do have the culture where their patients always come first,” said Annette Sy, who oversees 1,500 nurses (25% of them Filipino) as the chief nursing officer for Keck Medical Center of University of Southern California and who is married to a Filipino American physician. 

“I have Filipino nurses who are in that protected category, above 65 years of age, who could stay home and I wouldn’t question it, but they say, ‘I have to be here to help my patients,’” she told STAT, a medical journal.

Philippine Nurses Associaiton of America

The NNU calls for standardized, timely reporting between states and localities, rather than the current piecemeal approach, which undermines effective interpretation. A lag time of even a week can delay an effective response. Nurses call on all states and localities to publicly report at least the following data (for more details on what governments should report, read the statement):

• Daily reporting of data (as well as cumulative totals) on diagnostic testing and case counts at national, state, and county/local levels.
• Daily reporting and cumulative totals of data on health care worker infections and deaths at an establishment level, such as the specific hospital or business.
• Data on symptomatic cases must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels (influenza-like illness and Covid-like illness).
• Daily reporting of data on hospitalizations and deaths must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels.
• Hospital capacity data must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels; must be updated in real time; and must include total and available hospital beds by type (e.g., ICU, medical/surgical, telemetry, etc.), staffing, health care worker exposures and infections, and nosocomial (hospital-acquired) patient infections.
• Data on the stock and supply chain of essential personal protective equipment (PPE) and other supplies must be reported at national, state, and county/local levels.

“We cannot forget the deaths of so many health care workers, which includes 213 nurses,” said Zenei Cortez, RN, a co-president of NNU who works at Kaiser Permanente in South San Francisco. 

“These deaths were avoidable and unnecessary due to government and employer willful inaction. Nurses and health care workers were forced to work without personal protective equipment they needed to do their job safely. It is immoral and unconscionable that they lost their lives," said the Filipino American RN.