Table 5.

Stress induced by COVID-19.

Work-Related Stressor	Comments from First Responders
Risk of COVID-19 exposure during emergency response	Quite a few members have gotten sick. Quite a few of them were, you know, pretty afraid to do their jobs and go out and do what they’re paid to do because they were worried about getting COVID. (Department leader, male, 40s.)
	It is affecting officers. The whole unknown of going into different houses and you don’t know if you’re having contact with someone positive. And now people, if they’re in trouble with the law, they want to say they’re positive, hoping that the officer will just go away. But we can’t in that aspect. (Police officer, female, 40s.)
Concerns about infecting family members	I worried about bringing it home to my son. Because they didn’t know at the time. That was my biggest concern. (Police officer, female, 50s.)
	My only concern has been giving it, bringing it home. And so, you know, I change my clothes and I shower at the fire station. I walk in the front door, I take those clothes off, and I get in the shower. (Firefighter, male, 40s.)
Adapting to new work policies and procedures	At the start I think some of my peers and the boss were not necessarily in belief that this is any different than the flu. And so for our staff there was like a split on enforcing or imposing a mask policy… the boss opted not to do it at that time. And I think in hindsight, though I thought at the time, and in hindsight, that was a mistake. It’s since got imposed, but I think that exposed a lot of people, plus set a tone that made it hard, harder to overcome when a policy did get imposed. (Department leader, male, 50s.)
	Losing time. Like we’ve gone through so many different iterations of leave policies and you know, there was a point where people had to use their own time and that’s stressful as well. (Other staff, female, 40s.)