Estimating the risk of incident SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers in quarantine hospitals: the Egyptian example

  1. Sofía Jijón
  2. Ahmad Al Shafie
  3. Essam Hassan
  4. EMAE-MESuRS working group on nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 modeling
  5. Audrey Duval
  6. Kenza Hamzi
  7. Niels Hendrickx
  8. Ajmal Oodally
  9. Lulla Opatowski
  10. George Shirreff
  11. David R. M. Smith
  12. Cynthia Tamandjou
  13. Sofía Jijón
  14. Laura Temime
  15. Kévin Jean
  16. Laura Temime
  17. Kévin Jean
  18. Mohamed El-Kassas

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Abstract

In response to the COVID-19 epidemic, Egypt established a unique care model based on quarantine hospitals where only externally-referred confirmed COVID-19 patients were admitted, and healthcare workers resided continuously over 1- to 2-week working shifts. Using a mathematical model accounting for the false-negative rates of RT-PCR tests, we computed the incidence rate of SARS-CoV-2 infection among HCWs, while unveiling the proportion of infections remaining undiagnosed despite routine testing. We relied on longitudinal data, including results of routine RT-PCR tests, collected within three Egyptian quarantine hospitals. We estimated an incidence rate (per 100 person-day, PD) of 1.05 (95% CrI 0.58–1.65) at Hospital 1, 1.92 (95% CrI 0.93–3.28) at Hospital 2 and 7.62 (95% CrI 3.47–13.70) at Hospital 3. We found that the risk for an HCW to be infected during a working shift lay within the range of risk levels previously documented in standard healthcare settings for Hospitals 1–2, whereas it was > threefold higher for Hospital 3. This large variation suggests that HCWs from quarantine hospitals may face a high occupational risk of infection, but that, with sufficient infection control measures, this risk can be brought down to levels similar to those observed in standard healthcare settings.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41598-022-23428-x
  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.21.20248594v3 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.21.20248594v2 on medRxiv
  4. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.21.20248594: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  5. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.21.20248594v1 on medRxiv