WINONA, Minn. – The highly transmissible CoVid Omicron may create a new wave of health-care staffing issues, according to the president of Winona Health. Rachelle Schultz said Omicron appears less debilitating and less lethal than earlier Covid variants but, even so, can be expected to put more people in quarantine. That, Schultz said, can be devastating on hospital and clinics with high-risk front-line workers who become infected and can’t report for work. “What it does is cause people to be in quarantine, and that actually exacerbates or makes worse the staffing situation,” Schultz said in a KWNO interview. The state Health Department estimate that 92% of new Covid cases in southeast Minnesota are the omicron variant. “It’s here,” Schultz said. At the same time, she noted, new federal guidelines allow shorter quarantines for health-care workers, which, she said, may ease a staffing crisis.
