The number of healthcare professionals sidelined due to Covid-19 in the city of São Paulo has tripled in less than a month.

247 - The number of healthcare professionals in São Paulo's public health system who have been sidelined after contracting Covid-19 has nearly tripled in less than a month, according to a report by [source name missing]. G1.

According to data from the city hall itself, on December 9th of last year, the city had 90 professionals absent due to the illness – including doctors, nurses, health agents, and nursing assistants. Four weeks later, on January 6th, 2022, there were already 269 registered cases, a growth of 198,8%.

"It's an alarming number, it's an absurd number, and there's no way to accept this calmly. We already imagined this would happen because, in addition to the fact that we are living through a pandemic and an overlapping epidemic [of influenza], we have professionals who, due to exhaustion and fatigue, end up having greater exposure and becoming infected. The illness of these workers is not only due to exposure to the virus, but also to issues of work taken to the extreme and absurd working hours that increase the amount of contamination," says Dr. Vanessa Araújo, representative of the São Paulo Doctors' Union (Simesp).

Medical and nursing professionals have questioned recent decisions by the São Paulo City Hall, arguing that hiring 280 professionals is insufficient to alleviate the accumulated overload from the last two years of the pandemic.