COVID-19 seroprevalence among hospital staff and preprocedural patients in Thai community hospitals: a cross-sectional study

  1. Tanawin Nopsopon
  2. Krit Pongpirul
  3. Korn Chotirosniramit
  4. Narin Hiransuthikul

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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.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-046676
  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.24.20139188v3 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.24.20139188v2 on medRxiv
  4. ScreenIT

    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 StatementIRB: 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.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    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.
    IgG
    suggested: None

    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.
    • Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.

    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.

  5. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.24.20139188v1 on medRxiv