Anger in North Dakota after governor asks Covid-positive health workers to keep working

Doctors and nurses say order puts lives in danger, amid a Covid surge and a statewide shortage of healthcare workers

• Interactive: the healthcare workers who have died from Covid

Nurse Leslie McKarney has gotten used to the 16-hour shifts, to skipping lunch, to the nightly ritual of throwing all her clothes in the laundry and showering as soon as she walks through the door to avoid potentially infecting her children. She's even grown accustomed to triaging Covid patients, who often arrive at the emergency room so short of breath they struggle to describe their symptoms.

But despite the trauma and exhaustion of the last eight months, she was shocked when North Dakota's governor, Doug Burgum, said last week that healthcare workers who test positive for coronavirus but do not display symptoms could still report to work. The order, which is in line with CDC guidance for mitigating staff shortages, would only allow asymptomatic health workers who test positive to work in Covid units, and treat patients who already have the virus.