Cohorting of Non-Critically Ill COVID-19 Patients: A Multicenter Survey Study (COVID-COHORT)

  1. Ushma Purohit
  2. Mike Fralick

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed novel infection-control challenges for hospitals around the globe. One infection-control strategy that has been widely used in the context of other outbreaks is patient cohorting. This strategy refers to the placement of all patients exposed to the same laboratory-confirmed infectious agent in one location within the hospital. Little is known about the current utilization of this strategy with non-critically ill COVID-19 patients. An international multicenter, survey study was conducted to identify what strategies are planned or in place for patients with COVID-19 who are not critically ill. The survey was distributed from March 23-29th, 2020 to GIM physicians in Canada, USA, Denmark, Singapore, Hong Kong, and England. Of the 31 hospitals, 29 (94%) indicated that they plan on cohorting all GIM patients with COVID-19 to one location in the hospital. Among these 29 hospitals, 23 (79%) had implemented the plan at the time of the survey. The primary reasons for this decision were to limit the spread of COVID-19 and conserve PPE use. In conclusion, in the face of a novel virus there is near unanimity in the practice of patient cohorting as a potential mitigation strategy.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.01.20194233: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: The study was exempt from Research Ethics Board approval.
    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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Important limitations to our study include the lack of a systematic survey strategy and the lack of information on the rate of nosocomial outbreaks of respiratory pathogens within the participating hospitals. As COVID-19 continues to pose novel challenges for hospitals across the globe, it becomes vital for healthcare communities to share best practices and learn from one another. Our multicenter, international survey identified that all hospitals with active cases of COVID-19 on GIM wards are practicing patient cohorting.

    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 10.1101/2020.11.01.20194233 on medRxiv