NEW YORK - The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a huge toll on the US health care workforce during the past two years and left them in fear combined with stress, burnout and fatigue, The Hill has reported.

In 2020 alone, illness and injury increased by 40 percent in health care and social assistance sectors, higher than any other private industry sector and led by the nursing professions, according to a report published by The Hill on its website.

"Almost one in five health care workers have quit their practice while many more have considered leaving," said the report, noting that "America is now facing a nursing shortage, long present but pushed to the brink by the pandemic."

Meanwhile, "all amidst a challenging political environment in which there were endless debates about the utility of vaccines and masks," US health care workers continued to work as they always have, according to the report.

Health care workers are facing depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Others are experiencing moral injury, the sense that they cannot fulfill their moral obligation to provide high quality care due to various limitations, it said.

"At a time when so many were already struggling, layoffs eliminated the livelihoods of 12 percent of health care workers, and those that remain are pressed to work harder, to do more with less support," it added.