Ceremony planned to remember and honor RNs felled by COVID-19

NNU

Bonnie Castillo, (in black) leads the largest union of registered nurses in the U.S.

The 400 registered nurses who have died in the United States from the COVID-19 pandemic will be honored on a National Day of Remembrance, Wednesday, May 12, in the nation's capitol.

The names of each of the fallen health care workers will be projected on the AFL-CIO building, which sits across from the White House. The National Nurses United (NNU) is urging the Biden administration to immediately issue an Occupational Safety and Health Administration emergency temporary standard on infectious diseases to require employers to protect employees at work. 

The event will mark International Nurses Day, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth, and a time to mark the contributions nurses make to society across the globe.

• What: Honoring U.S. nurses who have died due to Covid-19
• When: Wednesday, May 12 from 9 p.m.-10 p.m. ET
• Where: Projected on the AFL-CIO headquarters building, 815 Black Lives Matter Plaza NW, Washington, DC 20005

The NNU continues to advocate for safe staffing levels, optimal personal protective equipment (PPE), the OSHA standard, and other measures aimed at protecting patients and health care workers across the nation.

“We stand united to honor our fallen nurses who were on the front line of this pandemic,” said NNU Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, a Filiipino American registered nurse. 

“These are more than just names projected on a building. These are our colleagues and friends, the hardworking nurses who spent each and every day protecting and caring for patients, even during a deadly pandemic," said the Filipino American leader of the U.S.'s largest nurses union. "They made the ultimate sacrifice, and we promise to never forget them, but honor them as we continue fighting to protect the living.”

According to data collected by NNU, more than a quarter of nurses who have died of COVID-19 and related complications in the U.S. are Filipino American, even though Filipinos make up only 4%, or about 150,000, registered nurses in the country.

In California where Filipinos comprise 20% of the RNs, NNU reports that 23 of the 38 known registered nurse deaths in California (as of February 11), or 3 out of 5 coronavirus deaths are of Filipino descent.

"It's very unfair because as nurses, we signed up to take care of patients, but none of us signed up to die," said registered nurse Zenei Cortez, another Filipino American leader of the NNU, to ABC News.

“The nurses have paid the ultimate price for the failure of our hospital employers and our government to protect them during this pandemic,” adds Castillo.