Japan nursing home admin worker certified with depression after moving bodies of COVID dead

OSAKA -- A nursing home administrative employee in Japan has been granted workers' compensation certification for depression after she was pressed into caring for coronavirus patients and transporting the dead during a cluster outbreak at the facility.

The woman in her 60s was ordered to take on the duties when trained care staff numbers proved insufficient to deal with the cluster. Lawyers familiar with labor issues have called it "rare" for workers' compensation to be approved due to the stress of dealing with COVID-19.

According to sources including the woman's attorney Shinsuke Tani of the Osaka Bar Association, she was a support counselor in charge of admissions and other duties at a long-term care facility for the elderly in Takarazuka, Hyogo Prefecture. A large-scale cluster hit the facility in April 2021. Thirty-six residents in the section for dementia patients were infected, as were 17 employees working in the section.

The cluster occurred during Japan's fourth COVID-19 wave triggered by the spread of the virus' alpha variant. The nursing home could find no hospitals able to take its sick residents, and it did not have enough staff to cope. The head director of the company operating the home then asked the woman to work in the dementia section, where she worked for six days serving meals, changing diapers, and performing other care duties.

Eight people died in the outbreak, and the woman also helped nurses move the corpses. These were covered in clear plastic body bags to prevent viral transmission, and so she could not avoid looking at the faces of the dead.

The woman had been a nursing helper before she started working at the facility, but she had little experience. She said that she "felt lonely and hard-pressed" when posted suddenly to the pandemic's front line, and that when she came face-to-face with the deceased, "I was shocked in a way I had never experienced before." She was given only one set of protective clothing per day, so there was also always risk of infection when changing in and out of them.

She was returned to her clerical duties that May, but went on leave late that month after she developed insomnia and began having flashbacks of the COVID-19 dead she had seen. She visited a hospital the following month and was diagnosed with depression.

The woman applied for workers' compensation, and in May 2023, the Nishinomiya Labor Standards Inspection Office ruled that the onset of her depression was a work-related injury.

The office noted that she had feared getting infected, as vaccinations for the elderly had just begun when she was pressed into duties in the nursing home's dementia section. It concluded that the psychological burden was intensified by having to move dead bodies, and took into consideration that the woman worked 50 overtime hours in the month of the cluster infection, or twice the figure from the previous month.

(Japanese original by Fumie Togami, Osaka City News Department)