Time-analysis of COVID-19 dispersion among health care workers and the general population
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Abstract
Introduction
Heath care workers with direct (HCW-D) or indirect (HCW-A) patient contact represent 4.2% to 17.8% of COVID-19 cases. We evaluate the temporal COVID-19 infection behavior among HCW-D, HCW-A, and non-HCW.
Methods
From February 2020 to April 2021, trained nurses recorded age, gender, occupation, and symptoms in a COVID-19 testing outpatient health center. We allocated data into weekly time fractals and calculated the proportion of COVID-19 positive among HCW vs. non-HCW and incorporated an ARFIMA model (traditionally used in weather forecast) to predict future cases of COVID-19.
Results
Among 8,998 COVID-19 RT-PCR tests, 3,462 (42%) patients were HCW-D, and 933 (11%) were HCW-A. Overall, 1,914 (21.3%) returned positive, representing 27%, 25% and 19% of HCW-D, HCW-A and non-HCW, respectively. HCW-D or HCW-A were significantly more likely to test positive for COVID-19 than non-HCW (OR=1.5, p<0.0001). The percentage of positive to negative test results remained steady over time. In the positive cases, the percentage of HCW to non-HCW declined significantly over time (Mann-Kendal trend test: tau=-0.58, p<0.0001). Our ARFIMA model showed a long-memory infection pattern in the occurrence of new COVID-19 cases lasting for months. Average error was 1.9 cases per week comparing predicted to actual values three months later (May-July 2021).
Conclusion
HCW have a sustained 50% higher risk of COVID-19 positivity in the pandemic. Time-series analysis showed a long-memory infection pattern with virus spread mainly among HCWs before the general population. The tool http://wdchealth.covid-map.com/shiny/covid-map/ will be updated according to population previous infection and vaccination impact.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.07.21261433: (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
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources All statistical analyses were performed using R version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22) on RStudio platform version 1.3.1073 and using the following packages: tidyverse, lubridate, forecast, quantreg, splines, ggmap, pracma, fractaldim, and janitor. RStudiosuggested: (RStudio, RRID:SCR_000432)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 …SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.07.21261433: (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
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources All statistical analyses were performed using R version 4.0.2 (2020-06-22) on RStudio platform version 1.3.1073 and using the following packages: tidyverse, lubridate, forecast, quantreg, splines, ggmap, pracma, fractaldim, and janitor. RStudiosuggested: (RStudio, RRID:SCR_000432)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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