Pandemic fatigue is defined as the body going into a flight or fight state due to the constant vigilance and attention to some long term crisis – such as a global pandemic. UCLA Health notes some of the signs of Pandemic Fatigue and what to look for, they include a sense of inner weariness and also feeling:
- Helpless
- Sad
- Worried
- Frustrated
- Irritable
You may also notice that you:
- Eat or sleep more or less than usual
- Have trouble focusing (brain fog)
- Feel edgy or nervous
- Snap at or argue with others
- Lack motivation
- Are unable to stop racing thoughts
- Withdraw from others
One of the big downsides of Pandemic Fatigue is the reduction of taking cautions for safety for ourselves and others during this Covid-19 epidemic.
GZERO Media held an interview with Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, on Pandemic Fatigue on this topic. They covered a few topics but the key one is about Pandemic Fatigue.
One particular part of this we want to highlight is that for people who are healthy, pandemic fatigue can erode the cautions that have been taken to keep them healthy. But now is the time to keep those cautions up – and that would include employers as well.
Cautions that we need to keep up include the 5 key actions:
Of the 5, employers can help their employees, and limit their liability of having a potentially unsafe work environment, by including company screening to help employees “be vigilant for symptoms”.
We covered some of the “why” and “how” of this in our article, “How to Screen Employees for Coronavirus“. And one of the best ways is using an application that is mobile, tablet and desktop friendly and does this for employees before they go into work. One tool for this is the Employee COVID-19 Self-Certification Tool (ECSCT).
This tool has a number of benefits including:
- Allowing for easy communication of new health and safety protocols that have been newly implemented in your organization to minimize the transmission of COVID-19 in the workplace in accordance to the latest CDC guidelines and OSHA regulations
- Easily provide daily electronic COVID-19 screening for employees
- Give HR teams a fully customizable dashboard for reporting purposes.
- Allow users to access a screening tool from a phone or other mobile device.
- Easily implement processes to screen employees before they come into work which may reduce the risk of an infected employee coming into work and infecting the other employees.
