COVID-19 cases and deaths in health care workers in Canada

March 31, 2022 — Health care workersFootnote i across the country play a critical role in the fight against COVID-19. As the pandemic continues, provinces and territories recognize the importance of maintaining a healthy workforce.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been over 150,000 recorded cases of COVID-19 in health care workers in Canada. While the data does not distinguish where the infection was acquired, it does provide an understanding of the degree of impact, which is critical in maintaining levels of care and responding to potential surges of need. Ensuring a healthy workforce will help sustain care for all Canadians.

As the pandemic has evolved, Canada’s provinces and territories have had to adapt their COVID-19 testing practices, which may lead to underestimates of the number of cases. Information reported in this product should be interpreted with caution.

This will be CIHI’s fourth and final iteration of the COVID-19 Cases and Deaths in Health Care Workers in Canada product.

Key findings

• Since June 2021, the number of recorded COVID-19 infections in Canadian health care workers has increased from 94,873 to 150,546 (as of January 14, 2022).
• Since the start of the pandemic, at least 46 health care workers have died from COVID-19 (as of January 14, 2022), including 3 new reported COVID-19–related deaths in health care workers since June 2021. 
• While the Omicron variant appears to demonstrate lower disease severity,Reference1 the largest number of new COVID-19 cases in health care workers was recorded between June 2021 and January 2022, compared with the first 3 waves. This had an impact on the number of staff available to provide care.
• Over the course of the pandemic, health care workers have made up a smaller share of Canada’s new COVID-19 cases. Of the total new cases that were recorded between June 16, 2021, and January 14, 2022, health care workers accounted for 4.5% of cases, compared with 19.4% of the cases recorded between January 15, 2020, and July 23, 2020.