OMICRON: WE MUST PROTECT THE HEALTH AND WELLBEING OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH WORKFORCE

Abstract

The covid-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on everyone’s personal
and professional lives. The emergence of the omicron variant and the subsequent plan B
restrictions have thrown us all into a period of further uncertainty about the impact that
this will have. Although not everyone was “in this together,” with longstanding inequalities
laid bare, the truth is that over the past two years nobody has been spared.1 Health
workers, including those in public health, were arguably among the most severely
affected.2 3 Therefore, the Faculty of Public Health (FPH), together with trainees,
surveyed its members in April and May 2021 to understand the impact of the pandemic
on the mental and physical health and wellbeing of its members.4 We found that a
majority of our members reported feeling fatigued, with about half saying they felt
emotionally exhausted, overwhelmed, or frustrated, often or always. Poor mental
health and wellbeing had a more marked impact on respondents’ personal rather than
professional lives, negatively affecting hobbies and leisure activities, family time, sleep,
and life satisfaction in general. The main causes of poor mental health and wellbeing
were work stress and an unmanageable workload, the government’s response to the
pandemic, social isolation, uncertainty about the future, and limited ability to influence
decision making in the pandemic response. Most participants ranked their physical
health as very good or good, and physical health had, in general, a lesser impact on
personal and professional activities than mental health. Diet, physical activity, and
alcohol intake all deteriorated to a degree, but participants found a wide range of coping
mechanisms for support.