COVID-19 seroprevalence among hospital staff and preprocedural patients in Thai community hospitals: a cross-sectional study
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Abstract
We aimed to explore the seroprevalence of hospital staff comparing to preprocedural patients in Thai community hospitals to shed light on the situation of COVID-19 infection of frontline healthcare workers in low infection rate countries where mass screening was not readily available.
Design
Cross-sectional study.
Setting
52 community hospitals in 35 provinces covered all regions of Thailand.
Participants
857 participants consisted of 675 hospital staff and 182 preprocedural patients.
Outcome measure
COVID-19 seroprevalence using a locally developed rapid IgM/IgG test kit
Results
Overall, 5.5% of the participants (47 of 857) had positive IgM, 0.2% (2 of 857) had positive IgG which both of them also had positive IgM. Hospitals located in the central part of Thailand had the highest IgM seroprevalence (11.9%). Preprocedural patients had a higher rate of positive IgM than the hospital staff (12.1% vs 3.7%). Participants with present upper respiratory tract symptoms had a higher rate of positive IgM than those without (9.6% vs 4.5%). Three quarters (80.5%, 690 of 857) of the participants were asymptomatic, of which, 31 had positive IgM (4.5%) which consisted of 20 of 566 healthcare workers (3.5%) and 11 of 124 preprocedural patients (8.9%).
Conclusions
COVID-19 antibody test could detect a substantial number of potential silent spreaders in Thai community hospitals where the nasopharyngeal PCR was not readily available, and the antigen test was prohibited. Antibody testing should be encouraged for mass screening in a limited resource setting, especially in asymptomatic individuals.
Trial registration
TCTR20200426002.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.24.20139188: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Ethics Committee Approval: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Chulalongkorn University (IRB No.236/63) and 18 general hospitals.
Consent: All participants provided written informed consent.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Antibodies Sentences Resources The internal validation of the test kit using the serum of 51 PCR confirmed COVID-19 cases and 150 controls showed sensitivity 94.1% (48 of 51) and specificity 98.0% (147 of 150) for IgM or IgG antibody. IgGsuggested: NoneResults from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.24.20139188: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Ethics Committee Approval: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Chulalongkorn University (IRB No.236/63) and 18 general hospitals.
Consent: All participants provided written informed consent.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Antibodies Sentences Resources The internal validation of the test kit using the serum of 51 PCR confirmed COVID-19 cases and 150 controls showed sensitivity 94.1% (48 of 51) and specificity 98.0% (147 of 150) for IgM or IgG antibody. IgGsuggested: NoneResults 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.
- Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.
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