60% of healthcare workers who contracted Covid-19 are still sick.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation says 4,823 of them remain ill.
The Organisation made the revelation while appearing before the Oireachtas Covid-19 committee.
One in ten coronavirus cases here involved nurses, with 88% of them becoming infected at work.
The union says most nurses and midwives are having to use annual leave to care for their children since the outbreak began.
An INMO survey finds 62% are using holiday days for childcare, 22% are paying childminders while at work, and one in ten were having their children minded by grandparents.
Phil Ni Sheaghdha, General Secretary of the INMO, is calling for the government to introduce priority access to childcare for healthcare workers:
"There has to be preferential treatment for frontline healthcare workers in order for them to continue their employment contract".
"There words are that they feel they have been abandoned, they have been applauded and they have been abandoned".
