It is heartening that an estimated 56,300 public healthcare workers, including nurses and support care staff, will get pay increases over the next two years, beginning in July. Nurses will see increases of 5 per cent to 14 per cent in their monthly base salaries, while other healthcare staff, such as allied health professionals, pharmacists and administrative and ancillary staff, will get increases of 3 per cent to 7 per cent. The Health Ministry will also raise funding support for salaries at publicly funded community care organisations, benefiting another 20,800 staff. These moves are timely because the last pay increase for nurses was in 2015, while allied staff last received a pay rise in 2016.

The coronavirus pandemic focused attention globally on healthcare workers, overturning conventional assumptions about the true social value of their work. Generally, the creation and sustenance of wealth have taken precedence over other forms of work in a market economy. Banking, finance, law and information technology rank highly among earning professions, and amply-rewarded surgeons and doctors with their own practices attend to the needs of private patients. High-achievers in sports and entertainment command significant salaries because of how their exceptional performances are tied to the financial fortunes of their employers and sponsors in a competitive economy. But Covid-19 undermined that logic by mounting an epidemiological threat to the existence of the economy itself.