Infection and mortality of healthcare workers worldwide from COVID-19: a systematic review

Abstract

To estimate COVID-19 infections and deaths in healthcare workers (HCWs) from a global perspective during the early phases of the pandemic.

Design

Systematic review.

Methods

Two parallel searches of academic bibliographic databases and grey literature were undertaken until 8 May 2020. Governments were also contacted for further information where possible. There were no restrictions on language, information sources used, publication status and types of sources of evidence. The AACODS checklist or the National Institutes of Health study quality assessment tools were used to appraise each source of evidence.

Outcome measures

Publication characteristics, country-specific data points, COVID-19-specific data, demographics of affected HCWs and public health measures employed.

Results

A total of 152 888 infections and 1413 deaths were reported. Infections were mainly in women (71.6%, n=14 058) and nurses (38.6%, n=10 706), but deaths were mainly in men (70.8%, n=550) and doctors (51.4%, n=525). Limited data suggested that general practitioners and mental health nurses were the highest risk specialities for deaths. There were 37.2 deaths reported per 100 infections for HCWs aged over 70 years. Europe had the highest absolute numbers of reported infections (119 628) and deaths (712), but the Eastern Mediterranean region had the highest number of reported deaths per 100 infections (5.7).

Conclusions

COVID-19 infections and deaths among HCWs follow that of the general population around the world. The reasons for gender and specialty differences require further exploration, as do the low rates reported in Africa and India. Although physicians working in certain specialities may be considered high risk due to exposure to oronasal secretions, the risk to other specialities must not be underestimated. Elderly HCWs may require assigning to less risky settings such as telemedicine or administrative positions. Our pragmatic approach provides general trends, and highlights the need for universal guidelines for testing and reporting of infections in HCWs.

SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.04.20119594: (What is this?)

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

Table 1: Rigor

Institutional Review Board Statement	not detected.
Randomization	not detected.
Blinding	not detected.
Power Analysis	not detected.
Sex as a biological variable	not 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:

Limitations: The primary limitation of this scoping review was the quality of the data available to us. A wide range of data was used, including grey literature, which made it difficult to normalise datasets. Furthermore, different countries were at different stages of their epidemics when we collected data. Given the incubation period of the virus before symptoms are seen and the lag in initial infection and death for those who succumb to COVID-19, data between countries at different stages of their epidemics will not be comparable. To make data comparable between different countries we would have needed to batch them according to when their epidemics started, but clear information about this was unavailable. As countries move past the peak of the virus and life begins to move back to normality, increased availability of high-quality data should allow us to conduct more extensive quantitative analysis of HCW infections. A retrospective analysis would allow countries to be matched at the same stage of the pandemic – thus allowing a like-for-like comparison. For our primary analyses, a key limitation was the heterogeneity in HCW classification. Differences here made it difficult to accurately compare data between the countries because, for example, some countries may include all allied healthcare professionals in their numbers, others may not, which could result in reporting inaccurate proportions of HCWs infected by COVID-19. Additionally, there was limited access to accurate...

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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