Abstract
Nursing homes house populations that are highly vulnerable to coronavirus disease. Point prevalence surveys (PPSs) provide information on the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection status of staff and residents in nursing homes and enable isolation of infectious persons to halt disease spread. We collected 16 weeks of public health surveillance data on a subset of nursing homes (34/212) in Connecticut, USA. We fit a Poisson regression model to evaluate the association between incidence and time since serial PPS onset, adjusting for decreasing community incidence and other factors. Nursing homes conducted a combined total of 205 PPSs in staff and 232 PPSs in residents. PPS was associated with 41%–80% reduction in incidence rate in nursing homes. Our findings provide support for the use of repeated PPSs in nursing home staff and residents, combined with strong infection prevention measures such as cohorting, in contributing to outbreak control.
Highlights
IntroductionPoint prevalence surveys (PPSs) provide information on the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection status of staff and residents in nursing homes and enable isolation of infectious persons to halt disease spread
Nursing homes house populations that are highly vulnerable to coronavirus disease
Several previous studies have documented the successful implementation of Point prevalence surveys (PPSs) testing in multiple congregate living facilities in the context of COVID-19 outbreak control [4,7,8,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26]
Summary
Point prevalence surveys (PPSs) provide information on the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection status of staff and residents in nursing homes and enable isolation of infectious persons to halt disease spread. We previously reported the results of the first round of PPS testing in a subset of Connecticut nursing homes, in which a high number and proportion of asymptomatic infections were detected [6]. We discussed the rapid turnaround time from conduct of PPS and institution of cohorting in those initial PPSs, factors that probably contributed to the positive effect of PPSs in reducing transmission. In this observational study, we followed the same nursing homes as they conducted serial PPS testing.
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