SARS-Cov-2 infection among health care workers working in COVID-19 and non COVID-19 clinical setting of a tertiary care teaching hospital

Abstract

Background: understanding the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare workers helps in developing newer strategies of infection prevention and control practices objectives were to determine the SARS-CoV-2 infection positivity rate and to identify the risk factors and outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infection among Health Care workers (HCWs) of a tertiary care center. Methods: A longitudinal cross-sectional study was done among the HCWs of a tertiary care teaching hospital from March 2020 to Feb 2022 Inclusion criteria: All HCWs infected with SARS-CoV-2 during the study period and whose data available with testing and quarantine committee. Exclusion criteria was incomplete HCWs data. Results: A 840 HCWs out of 2990 total HCWs were infected with SARS-CoV-2: infectivity rate was 28%. Majorities were females (53.9%). mean age was (35.6±1.006) years. nurses (33.8%) were most commonly affected followed by doctors (26%). Working at designated COVID-19 hospital was significantly associated with SARS-Cov-2 positivity compared to working in non- COVID-19 hospital, which was statistically significant at chi-square value of 6.636 at p<0.01. recovery rate was 99.8%; death rate was (0.2%) due to uncontrolled diabetes, alcoholism and smoking; positivity rate among unvaccinated was 6%. Conclusions: there is a need to reduce high burden of SARS-CoV-2 positivity among HCWs. Revision of existing infection prevention and control (IPC) practices, development of innovative training strategies, constant reinforcement and supportive supervision of IPC practices has to be considered besides emphasizing the importance healthy life style measures.