It is estimated that at least 90,000 health care staff worldwide were diagnosed with Covid-19, and probably twice that, the International Council of Nurses (ICN) said in the light of the evidence of ongoing shortages of protective equipment.

On Wednesday the International Council of Nurses (ICN) said to date, at least 90,000 healthcare staff worldwide are believed to have tested coronavirus positive, amid reports of ongoing security equipment shortages.

It said in a statement more than 260 nurses have died of the disease, urging authorities to help avoid the spread of the virus among staff and patients to keep records more reliable.

A month ago, the Geneva-based organization said 100 nurses had died in a pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus that appeared late last year in the central Chinese town of Wuhan.

“The figure for health care workers infections has risen from 23,000 to we think more than 90,000, but that is still an underestimation because it is not (covering) every country in the world,” Howard Catton, the chief executive officer of ICN, told Reuters Television in its offices on the lakeside.

The estimate of 90,000 is based on information gathered from national nursing organizations, policy statistics, and media reports from 30 countries. The ICN provides for 130 state bodies and over 20 million registered nurses.

Catton said noting that 3.5 million cases of COVID-19 were recorded around the world “If the average health worker infection rate, about 6 percent we think, is applied to that, the figure globally could be more than 200,000 health worker infections today.

“The scandal is that governments are not systematically collecting and reporting on this information. It looks to us as though they are turning a blind eye which we think is completely unacceptable and will cost more lives,” Catton, a Briton has added.

The ICN has said it now assumes that these “shocking” statistics underestimate the truth substantially.

“This failure to record both infection rates and deaths among healthcare workers is putting more nurses and their patients in danger,” the statement said.