Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 Infection among Health Care Workers of a Hybrid Tertiary COVID-19 Hospital in Kerala, India

  1. SJ Jessy
  2. Shamha Beegum
  3. S Genga
  4. G Bindu
  5. S Chintha
  6. Sukshma Sasidharan
  7. Ansu Tonio
  8. Aravind Reghukumar

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Abstract

Introduction: Health Care Workers(HCWs) have more risk of exposure, and those working in critical care units are likely to have exposure to higher viral inoculum load from aerosol generating procedures. The risk of acquisition of infection is higher in those who work in hybrid hospitals compared to those designated as Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) hospitals. Aim: To estimate the prevalence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2019 (SARS-CoV-2) infection among Health Care Workers (HCWs) of a hybrid COVID-19 treatment hospital in Kerala. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in the Central Biochemistry Laboratory, Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, during the period 8th January 2021 to 19th January 2021. Among 3550 HCWs, 979 subjects were selected and grouped into high risk and low risk category, based on their job profile in the hybrid hospital. Results: Finally, 940 HCWs were analysed in the study grouped as high risk (n=859) and low risk (n=81). SARS-CoV-2 Immunoglobulin (Ig) was detected in 180/940 (19.1%) of them. Seroprevalence among the high-risk group was 20.3% (174/859) and that in low-risk group was 7.4% (6/81) (p=0.005). In high-risk group, seropositivity was noted in 30.54 % (76/249) of nurses, 19% hospital attenders (30/158), 18.9% (59/312) resident doctors and 6.4% (9/140) consultant doctors. In those with a positive history of SARS-CoV-2 infection, seropositivity was found among 75.4% (101/134). In those who were COVID-19 positive during July 2020, 33.3% (6/18) were still IgG reactive. Conclusion: The study reported 19.1% SARS-CoV-2 IgG reactivity among HCWs. Seropositivity was significantly higher in high-risk group compared to low-risk. Antibody decay kinetics was comparable to that in published literature. Infection control challenges in hybrid hospitals account for higher seropositivity in this study, compared to overall seroprevalence among HCWs in Kerala.

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  1. Version published to 10.7860/njlm/2022/52458.2642
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.19.21260792: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsConsent: After obtaining informed written consent, data with regard to demographic variables, clinical history with regard to symptomatology in case of past history of COVID 19, infection prevention and control measures adopted etc were captured on to a structured proforma approved by Institutional Ethics Committee.
    IRB: After obtaining informed written consent, data with regard to demographic variables, clinical history with regard to symptomatology in case of past history of COVID 19, infection prevention and control measures adopted etc were captured on to a structured proforma approved by Institutional Ethics Committee.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    RandomizationSARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in healthcare workers of dedicated-COVID hospitals and non–COVID hospitals of District Srinagar, Kashmir] Sampling: From 3550 HCWs at GMCT, 979 HCW were selected by stratified random sampling.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Random sample numbers were generated and data analysis was performed Using R software (R version 3.6.2 (2019-12-12) Copyright (C) 2019 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)) and SPSS version 16.0.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.19.21260792 on medRxiv