Prevalence and Longevity of SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies Among Health Care Workers

  1. Michael Brant-Zawadzki
  2. Deborah Fridman
  3. Philip A Robinson
  4. Matthew Zahn
  5. Clayton Chau
  6. Randy German
  7. Marcus Breit
  8. Elmira Burke
  9. Jason R Bock
  10. Junko Hara

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Abstract

Background

Understanding severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 antibody prevalence in a spectrum of health care workers (HCWs) may provide benchmarks of susceptibility, help us understand risk stratification, and support enactment of better health policies and procedures.

Methods

Blood serum was sampled at enrollment and 8-week follow-up from HCWs (n = 3458) and from community first responders (n = 226) for immunoglobulin G (IgG) analyses. Demographics, job duties, location, and coronavirus disease 2019–related information were collected.

Results

The observed IgG antibody prevalence was 0.93% and 2.58% at enrollment (May/June) and 8-week follow-up (July/August), respectively, for HCWs, and 5.31% and 4.35% for first responders. For HCWs, significant differences (P < .05) between negative and positive at initial assessment were found for age, race, fever, and loss of smell, and at 8-week follow-up for age, race, and all symptoms. Antibody positivity persisted at least 8 weeks in all positive HCWs.

Conclusions

We found considerably lower antibody prevalence among HCWs compared with other published studies. While rigorous safety process measures instituted in our workplace and heightened awareness at and outside of the workplace among our HCWs may have contributed to our findings, the significant discrepancy from our community prevalence warrants further studies on other contributing factors.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.09.20210229: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Subject Recruitment: Institutional review board (IRB) approval was obtained for this study from Providence St.
    Consent: Enrollment and Data Collection: Informed consents were obtained in person originally, then transitioned to electronic consent format starting June 19, 2020.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    IgG Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 Analysis: Serum analysis for IgG antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 utilized the Ortho Clinical Diagnostics VITROS® XT 7600 platform.
    IgG
    suggested: None
    Of 31 PCR samples, 29 were positive for SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody.
    SARS-CoV-2 IgG
    suggested: None

    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

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1093/ofid/ofab015
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.09.20210229v1 on medRxiv