In the midst of the Covid epidemic, complaints pour in about facilities and safety gear for healthcare workers being dependent on hierarchy rather than on the extent to which health personnel face risk of exposure. For instance, doctors are accommodated in hotels so that they don’t have to worry about infecting their families when they return home. However, nurses and technicians are made to stay in hostels or guesthouses and are transported to and from their place of residence in packed buses, defeating the whole concept of social distancing.Nurses working in the Delhi government’s main Covid hospital, LNJP Hospital, were first made to stay in dormitories in the hospital while doctors were put up in a plush hotel nearby. It took a strong protest by the nurses’ association for them to be given better facilities. Nurses have also complained about doctors given priority in getting PPEs in a situation of shortage.In many hospitals, ward boys and sanitation staff, many on short-term contract, stopped coming to work as few establishments had made arrangements for their accommodation. These are staff who change bedsheets, clean floors and toilets and even change diapers. Yet they don’t get PPE kits, and instead are forced to work wearing HIV kits, said a hospital employee.In Mumbai, a female cleaner at Kasturba Hospital, among the first healthcare workers to contract the infection at the hospital, had nowhere to go after she was discharged on Sunday. The staffer was discouraged to return home by her worried neighbours, said a hospital source.Kasturba administration then decided to house her in a ward meant for sweepers and other ancillary workers catering to Covid-19 cases, as she is supposed to be under quarantine for 14 days after discharge. And due to objections from other staff staying in the ward, a makeshift partition has been built to separate her from them.Even kitchen staff who cook and serve the quarantined hospital staff get no masks, gloves or hand sanitisers. In Bhopal Municipal Corporation, a kitchen supervisor who got infected has led to scores having to be quarantined.“Within a Covid ward or isolation facility, if some people wear protective gear while others don’t, it defeats the purpose. It is this kind of behavior which has led to health facilities becoming hot spots,” said an officer bearer of the United Nurses Association . “We are getting reports from different parts of the country that nurses either don’t get PPE or get poor quality ones. This is because nurses have no presence in decision-making bodies,” said Inayat Singh Kakar, of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan . She pointed out that a much larger number of nurses have been infected than doctors, showing just who is more at risk.The worst off seem to be ASHAs and anganwadi workers who carry out surveys on migrants who have returned and check on those quarantined at home. In Bhilwara, a 60-year-old anganwadi worker monitoring a quarantined Covid patient died. “They are lowest in the hierarchy, mostly widows or old women. They are attacked by people when they go out to do surveys and even the police beat them up,” said AR Sindhu, general secretary of the All Indian Federation of Anganwadi Workers “Class IV staffers are facing as much discrimination or hardship of commuting as doctors and nurses, yet the corporation has not provided them with a decent place to sleep and bathe,” said Pradeep Narkar, secretary of Mumbai’s Municipal Mazdoor Union