Exposed, silenced, attacked: Failures to protect health and essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic

There is currently no systematic global tracking of how many health and essential workers have died after contracting COVID-19. However, Amnesty International has collated and analysed a wide range of available data that shows that over 3000 health workers are known to have died after contracting COVID-19 in 79 countries around the world. According to Amnesty International’s monitoring, the countries with the highest numbers of health worker deaths thus far include the USA (507), Russia (545), UK (540, including 262 social care workers), Brazil (351), Mexico (248), Italy (188), Egypt (111), Iran (91), Ecuador (82) and Spain (63).