Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.
Who will be affected?
Readers: No access to all 28 journals. We recommend accessing our articles via PubMed Central
Authors: No access to the submission form or your user account.
Reviewers: No access to your user account. Please download manuscripts you are reviewing for offline reading before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
Editors: No access to your user account to assign reviewers or make decisions.
Copyeditors: No access to user account. Please download manuscripts you are copyediting before Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 7:00 PM.
Sahoo DP, Singh AK, Sahu DP, Pradhan SK, Patro BK, Batmanabane G, Mishra B, Behera B, Das A, Dora GS, L A, S M A, Nair J, Panigrahi S, R A, Sahoo BK, Sahu S, Sahoo S
Hospital-Based Contact Tracing of Patients With COVID-19 and Health Care Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Eastern India: Cross-sectional Study
Hospital based contact tracing of COVID-19 patients and health care workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Eastern India: A cross-sectional study
Durgesh Prasad Sahoo;
Arvind Kumar Singh;
Dinesh Prasad Sahu;
Somen Kumar Pradhan;
Binod Kumar Patro;
Gitanjali Batmanabane;
Baijayantimala Mishra;
Bijayini Behera;
Ambarish Das;
G Susmita Dora;
Anand L;
Azhar S M;
Jyolsna Nair;
Sasmita Panigrahi;
Akshaya R;
Bimal Kumar Sahoo;
Subhakanta Sahu;
Suchismita Sahoo
ABSTRACT
Background:
Contact tracing and subsequent quarantining of Health Care Workers (HCWs) is essential to minimize further transmission of SARS-CoV2 infection.
Objective:
In this study, we have reported the yield of contact tracing of COVID-19 cases and risk stratification of HCWs exposed to them.
Methods:
This is an analysis of routine data collected for contact tracing of COVID-19 cases from 19th March to 31st August 2020 at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. COVID-19 cases were either admitted patients, out-patients, or HCWs in the hospital. HCWs who were exposed to COVID-19 cases were categorized as per the risk stratification guidelines into high-risk contacts and low-risk contacts
Results:
During contact tracing, 3411 HCWs were identified as exposed to 360 COVID-19 cases. Out of 360, 269 (74.7%) were either admitted or out-patients and 91(26.1%) were HCWs. After risk stratification 890 (26.1%) were categorized as high-risk contacts and 2521 (73.9%) were categorized as low-risk contacts. The test positivity rate of high-risk contact and low-risk contacts were 3.82% and 1.90%, respectively. The average number of high-risk contacts was significantly higher when the COVID-19 case was an admitted patient (6.6) rather than when the COVID-19 case was an HCW (4.0) or outpatient (0.2), p-value = 0.009. Similarly, the average number of high-risk contacts was higher when the COVID-19 case was admitted in non-COVID-19 area (15.8) as compared to COVID-19 area (0.27), p value < 0.001. There was significant decline in mean number of high-risk contacts over the study period.
Conclusions:
Contact tracing and risk stratification was effective and helped in reducing the number of HCWs going for quarantine. There was also a decline in high-risk contacts during study period suggesting role of implementation of hospital based COVID-19 related infection control strategies. This contact tracing and risk stratification approach designed in the current study can also be implemented in other healthcare settings.
Citation
Please cite as:
Sahoo DP, Singh AK, Sahu DP, Pradhan SK, Patro BK, Batmanabane G, Mishra B, Behera B, Das A, Dora GS, L A, S M A, Nair J, Panigrahi S, R A, Sahoo BK, Sahu S, Sahoo S
Hospital-Based Contact Tracing of Patients With COVID-19 and Health Care Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Eastern India: Cross-sectional Study