Epidemiology of COVID-19 infection amongst workers in Primary Healthcare in Qatar

Abstract

Background: COVID-19 transmission was significant amongst Healthcare workers worldwide. Aim: This study aims to estimate the risk of exposure for COVID-19 across Primary Healthcare workers in the State of Qatar. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted to study the burden of COVID-19 among staff working at PHCC during the COVID-19 pandemic from March 1 to October 31, 2020. Results: 1,048 (87.4%)of the infected HCWs belonged to the age group below 45 years, and 488 (40.7%) HCWs were females. 450 (37.5%) were HCWs clinical staff working in one of the 27 PHCC HCs; Despite the increased patient footfall and risk environment, the COVID HCs had an attack rate of 10.1%, which is not significantly different from the average attack rate of 8.9% among staff located in other HCs (p-value =0.26). Storekeepers, engineering & maintenance staff, housekeeping staff, support staff, and security staff (outsourced positions) had the highest positivity rates, 100%, 67.2%, 47.1%, 32.4%, and 29.5% respective positivity rates. Conclusions: The elevated risk of infection amongst outsourced healthcare workers can be explained by environmental factors such as living conditions. On the other hand, better containment within clinical healthcare workers can be attributed to strict safety training and compliance with preventative measures which is recommended to be implemented across all settings.

Biological and radiological biomarkers in SARS-CoV-2 infected healthcare workers in governmental hospitals in Qatar

“…Hypertension and diabetes mellitus were the main co-morbidities observed while the manifested symptoms were generally non-specific with fever, sore throat and cough being most common followed by tiredness/ aches, respiratory symptoms, and headaches. Accordingly, our results are consistent with published data from Qatar on HCWs [22,23].…”

“…In this observational study, we have explored and described the clinical characteristics, laboratory parameters and radiological features of SARS-COV-2 infection in HCWs in governmental hospitals in Qatar. There are two published papers from Qatar focused primarily on prevalence of SARS-COV-2 infection and risk factors in healthcare workers (HCWs) [22,23]. This study provides an in-depth analysis of the demographics, clinical characteristics as well as correlation of changes in lab parameters with CXR severity in HCWs.…”

“…Opacities that extended over more than one sector were scored based on the number of sectors they filled. Finally, depending on the overall score, each chest radiograph was assigned a severity rating of either mild (0-8), moderate (9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16) or severe [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] (Figure 2b and Figure 2c).…”

Impact of COVID-19 on environmental services workers in healthcare settings: a scoping review

“…There were six studies from the United States [10,12,19,24,25,31], six studies from India [16,18,20,27,29,32], two studies from the United Kingdom [17,26], two from Egypt [21,30], one each from Brazil [22], Chile [28], Ethiopia [33], Iran [15], Mexico [14], Qatar [11], Saudi Arabia [13] and Turkey [23].…”

“…The seroprevalence studies, with the exception of a single study from Iran [15], consistently reported that environmental services workers (housekeeping, cleaners and janitorial staff) were at a significantly elevated risk of having contracted COVID-19 compared to other healthcare workers in the same institution [10][11][12][13][14][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. The quality of these cross-sectional studies was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal checklist for analytical cross-sectional study [34] by consensus among three study investigators (Q.X.N., C.Y.L.Y.…”