Estimating Preventable COVID-19 Infections Related to Elective Outpatient Surgery in Washington State: A Quantitative Model

  1. Yuemei Zhang
  2. Sheng-Ru Cheng

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Abstract

Background

As the number of suspected and confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US continues to rise, the US surgeon general, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and several specialty societies have issued recommendations to consider canceling elective surgeries. However, these recommendations have also faced controversy and opposition.

Methods

Using previously published information and publicly available data on COVID-19 infections, we calculated a transmission rate and generated a mathematical model to predict a lower bound for the number of healthcare-acquired COVID-19 infections that could be prevented by canceling or postponing elective outpatient surgeries in Washington state.

Results

Our model predicts that over the course of 30 days, at least 75.9 preventable patient infections and at least 69.3 preventable healthcare worker (HCW) infections would occur in WA state alone if elective outpatient procedures were to continue as usual.

Conclusion

Canceling elective outpatient surgeries during the COVID-19 pandemic could prevent a large number of patient and healthcare worker infections.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.18.20037952: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    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.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.18.20037952 on medRxiv