What We're Reading: NYC Nursing Strike Ends; Hospital Volunteers and Labor Laws; Most Long COVID Symptoms Ease

New York City Nursing Strike Ends After 3 Days

A nursing strike at 2 of New York City’s’s largest hospitals, Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, and Mount Sinai Hospital in upper Manhattan, has ended after 3 days, according to CBS News. Both hospitals announced that they had reached tentative agreements with the New York State Nurses Association, in what the union called “historic.” According to the union, the nurses “won concreate enforceable safe staffing ratios in both deals and will be back on the job starting this morning.”

Hospitals May Be Skirting Labor Laws With Use of Volunteer Staff

US hospitals benefit from potentially more than $5 billion in free volunteer labor annually, according to a Kaiser Health News (KHN) analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Independent Sector. KHN cited labor experts who said using “hospital volunteers, particularly at for-profit institutions, provides an opportunity for facilities to run afoul of federal rules, create exploitative arrangements, and deprive employees of paid work amid a larger fight for fair wages.” The role that volunteers play in the day-today functioning of many health systems became visible during the height of COVID-19, when facilities shut their doors to nearly all but paid staff; even when vaccines launched, many volunteers did not return, KHN said.

Lingering COVID-19 Symptoms Ease Over Time, Study Finds

Shortness of breath, loss of taste and smell, and other lingering COVID-19 symptoms may ease within a year, according to NBC News. Although symptoms of long COVID may often be scary and debilitating, research by KI Research Institute and Maccabi Healthcare Services in Israel found that the majority of people with these symptoms will naturally get better over time. While this may come as encouraging news for many, it is clear that some patients continue to suffer after a year of infection, and it also isn’t known how many people are affected.