Risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 transmission in student residences: a case-ascertained study
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Abstract
Background
We aimed to investigate the overall secondary attack rates (SAR) of COVID-19 in student residences and to identify risk factors for higher transmission.
Methods
We retrospectively analysed the SAR in living units of student residences which were screened in Leuven (Belgium) following the detection of a COVID-19 case. Students were followed up in the framework of a routine testing and tracing follow-up system. We considered residence outbreaks followed up between October 30th 2020 and May 25th 2021. We used generalized estimating equations (GEE) to evaluate the impact of delay to follow-up, shared kitchen or sanitary facilities, the presence of a known external infection source and the recent occurrence of a social gathering. We used a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) for validation.
Results
We included 165 student residences, representing 200 residence units (N screened residents = 2324). Secondary transmission occurred in 68 units which corresponded to 176 secondary cases. The overall observed SAR was 8.2%. In the GEE model, shared sanitary facilities ( p = 0.04) and the recent occurrence of a social gathering ( p = 0.003) were associated with a significant increase in SAR in a living unit, which was estimated at 3% (95%CI 1.5-5.2) in the absence of any risk factor and 13% (95%CI 11.4-15.8) in the presence of both. The GLMM confirmed these findings.
Conclusions
Shared sanitary facilities and the occurrence of social gatherings increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission and should be considered when screening and implementing preventive measures.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2022.03.23.22272836: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: Study oversight: The Ethics Committee Research UZ/KU Leuven approved our study protocol (study number S64919).
Consent: The need for individual informed consent was waived by the Ethics Committee since data was gathered in the context of an ongoing public health response.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis 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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques …SciScore for 10.1101/2022.03.23.22272836: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: Study oversight: The Ethics Committee Research UZ/KU Leuven approved our study protocol (study number S64919).
Consent: The need for individual informed consent was waived by the Ethics Committee since data was gathered in the context of an ongoing public health response.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis 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: 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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