Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) screening system utilizing daily symptom attestation helps identify hospital employees who should be tested to protect patients and coworkers.

Abstract

To investigate the effectiveness of a daily attestation system used by employees of a multi-institutional academic medical center, which comprised of symptom-screening, self-referrals to the Occupational Health Services team, and/or a severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) test. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of all employee attestations and SARS-CoV-2 tests performed between March and June 2020. A large multi-institutional academic medical center, including both inpatient and ambulatory settings. All employees who worked at the study site. Data were combined from the attestation system (COVIDPass), the employee database, and the electronic health records and were analyzed using descriptive statistics including χ2, Wilcoxon, and Kruskal-Wallis tests. We investigated whether an association existed between symptomatic attestations by the employees and the employee testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. After data linkage and cleaning, there were 2,117,298 attestations submitted by 65,422 employees between March and June 2020. Most attestations were asymptomatic (99.9%). The most commonly reported symptoms were sore throat (n = 910), runny nose (n = 637), and cough (n = 570). Among the 2,026 employees who ever attested that they were symptomatic, 905 employees were tested within 14 days of a symptomatic attestation, and 114 (13%) of these tests were positive. The most common symptoms associated with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test were anosmia (23% vs 4%) and fever (46% vs 19%). Daily symptom attestations among healthcare workers identified a handful of employees with COVID-19. Although the number of positive tests was low, attestations may help keep unwell employees off campus to prevent transmissions.