Risk of stress and insomnia going viral among Covid-19 health workers

Health workers could face sleepless nights of anxiety when the Covid-19 outbreak peaks.

SA is in the early stages of the pandemic compared to countries such as China, Italy and the US, where the grim stats of infection and deaths have shown exponential growth.

Those countries provide a glimpse into what could be around the corner as global infection numbers close in on 1.4-million (WHO figures), and a new study has raised the spectre of sleep-deprived health workers.

The study, the first of its kind, has been published in Frontiers in Psychiatry and reveals that more than a third of medical staff who responded to the outbreak during its peak in China suffered from insomnia.

Those struggling to sleep were also more likely to feel depressed, anxious and have stress-based trauma, according to the paper.

Dr Bin Zhang, a professor at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, said: “Typically, stress-related insomnia is transient and persists only for a few days, but if the Covid-19 outbreak continues, the insomnia may gradually become chronic insomnia in clinical settings.”

In SA, public health facilities are already stretched to the limit, with many health-care workers suffering from exhaustion and anxiety.

Last year, a study of systematic burnout among sub-Saharan health workers found that 81% of physicians in some regions were suffering from burnout. A Free State study found that a staggering 98% of nurses were experiencing emotional exhaustion. 

The new study in China, conducted among 1,563 participants, found that health workers with insomnia were also more likely to be suffering from depression during the pandemic.

One of the culprits? Uncertainty.

“The most important factor was having very strong uncertainty regarding effective disease control among medical staff,” said Zhang. Strong uncertainty was 33% higher for those exhibiting insomnia.

The authors said health workers were also under “incredible stress in general”. Being in close contact with infected patients who could make them sick was a constant source of stress, coupled with the worry of passing on the disease to family and friends.

“Medical staff had to wear a full array of personal protective equipment (PPE) for more than 12 hours at a time, often without being able to take a break because they risked infection by removing the protective equipment,” said the authors.