Incidence of COVID-19 infection amongst the high risk versus low risk health care workers: an audit from a tertiary cancer care centre

Abstract

Background: Theoretically, health care workers (HCW) are at increased risk of getting infected with COVID-19 compared to the general population. Limited data exists regarding the actual incidence of COVID-19 infection amongst the high risk and low risk HCW of the same hospital. We present an audit from our tertiary cancer care centre comparing the COVID-19 infection rate between the high risk and low risk HCW, all of whom had been provided with adequate protective measures and health education.Methods: This is a retrospective observational study from 01 April 2020 to 30 September 2020, in which all the 970 HCW of Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer were divided into high risk and low risk groups. High risk HCW included all the medical and non-medical staff directly involved with the care of COVID-19 patients, and rest were low risk HCW. Adequate protective measures and classes for infection prevention were provided to all the HCW. We calculated the incidence of COVID-19 infection in both these groups based on the positive real time-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) result and also looked for any significant difference in incidence between these two groups.Results: The incidence of COVID-19 infection amongst the high risk HCW was 13% and that of low risk HCW was 14%.Conclusions: We found no significant difference in COVID-19 infection between the high risk and low risk HCW. Thus, along with protective measures, behavior modifications induced by working in high risk areas, prevented the high risk HCW from getting increased COVID-19 infection compared to the low risk HCW.