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Medical workers at Keimyung University Dongsan Medical Center in Daegu take a break amid their hectic duties on Mar. 2. (Yonhap News)

“I’ve been working for 15 days straight, and I can’t think straight anymore. I feel bad for the younger nurses with less experience, and I do my best not to give them extra work. They tell me that at home, they pass right out as soon as their head hits the pillow.”

Kim Ju-hyeon (pseudonym), a 48-year-old nurse at a screening clinic in Daegu, said on Mar. 2 that it was “heartbreaking to see patients who just show up at the screening clinic because they couldn’t get through due to all the phone inquiries, or the ones who can’t get a hospital bed.” The situation is one where medical personnel have to constantly be on guard amid non-stop working conditions as they respond to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

“Once the situation calms down, I could end up suffering from burnout,” Kim admitted.

Nearly two weeks have passed since the explosive rise in coronavirus cases in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province that started on Feb. 18 with a “supercluster” at the city’s branch of the Shincheonji religious sect, and medical workers in the region are starting to reach their limits amid the accumulating fatigue. The large increase in patients requiring treatment per medical worker -- including those at the screening clinic conducting a full-scale tests of members from the Shincheonji church’s Daegu branch, as well as quarantine ward nurses facing double the workload in ordinary wards -- has many warning of imminent burnout.

Yun Ju-yeong (pseudonym) is a 33-year-old nurse working in the quarantine ward at Daegu Catholic University Medical Center, which has admitted over 90 confirmed coronavirus patients. On Mar. 1, she arrived at the hospital at noon and worked until midnight, with no time to even sit down apart from meals. With the center’s addition of 100 beds to hospitalize coronavirus patients on Feb. 26, the number of patients assigned to each quarantine ward nurse rose from six to 10. To prevent infection, she wears a Level D full-body protective suit, which leaves her “soaked in sweat just walking around.” In addition to providing meals to patients in place of their guardians and caregivers, she is even tasked with changing diapers for elderly patients.

“When you’re wearing a Level D [suit], it slows your movements, so your normal working speed drops. Meanwhile, the patients are anxious and keep pushing the call button,” she explained. “Some of the guardians have been verbally abusive complaining about the adjusted rounds system, which minimizes patient contact.”

“My exhausted colleagues all talk about how hard it is, how they can’t do this anymore, but they can’t do anything because if they quit, that would only make things harder for their colleagues who stay behind,” she added.

The exhaustion for medical staff has only been compounded as medical equipment is used up.

“When you go back into the ward after taking a break, you have to change into a new protective suit, but since there’s a shortage of Level D [suits], it becomes difficult to leave the ward because you’re trying to conserve them,” Yun said.

“We’ve sometimes had shift workers who didn’t have any protective suits to wear and had to wait until they got some from another hospital,” she added.

As reports of the difficulties medical workers have emerged, the South Korean government has started providing belated support measures. Kim Kang-lip, first general coordinator for the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC)’s central disaster management headquarters, said on Mar. 2 that “in response to the current serious physical and mental fatigue among medical staff, we will be locating additional medical personnel in order to guarantee local staff at least some down time.”

For now, the government plans to assign an additional 111 physicians and nurses -- chiefly military medical staff -- to the Armed Forces Daegu Hospital, a state-designated hospital for infectious diseases. The Ministry of National Defense plans to defer its four-week military training for 750 new public health doctors scheduled for hiring this year so that they can be sent in on the ground by Mar. 5. A total of 327 military hospital workers (not including field units) are also be sent in to respond to the coronavirus situation.

Public health authorities are working with the Korean Nurses Association (KNA) to recruit medical staff to work in Daegu and North Gyeongsang hospitals and clinics. On Mar. 1 alone, a total of 510 nurses applied with KNA to travel to Daegu and North Gyeongsang, bringing the number of nurses volunteering to care for patients in the region up to around 1,300 to date.

The Daegu Medical Association said that around 300 physicians are currently volunteering as medical staff for coronavirus patients in Daegu and North Gyeongsang. Around 10% of them are reportedly from regions outside of Daegu and North Gyeongsang.

By Seon Dam-eun and Park Jun-yong, staff reporter

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