Untitled

Abstract

Corona virus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2) that was first discovered in December, 2019, in Wuhan, China. In March, 2020 World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic (WHO, 2020). Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) molecular test is the most commonly test used to detect COVID-19 infection (WHO, 2020). But it suffers from low sensitivity (e.g. 60% -70%) in the early detection of COVID-19, due to the false negative rate and the long time for results to show up with respect to the need for rapid decision-making for patients with clinically noticeable pneumonia (Ai et al., 2020;Fang et al., 2020;Li et al., 2020;Yang et al., 2020;Diao et al., 2020). Rapid Diagnostic Test (RDT) is cheaper and quicker than PCR, but it has a disadvantage of less accuracy (WHO, 2020).Diagnostic imaging examination, mainly high resolution chest computed tomography (HRCT) and chest X-ray (CXR) play a remarkable role in detecting coronavirus disease, chest computed tomography is preferred over CXR because of its accuracy, improved contrast resolution, high sensitivity and ability to diagnose the disease in early phase of development (Zu et al., 2020;Diao et al., 2020;Shi et al. 2020). In detecting pulmonary abnormalities, HRCT is more sensitive than CXR (Ng et al., 2020). Due to their rule in COVID-19 pandemic MIWs should be aware of infection control measures and trained in the use of A B S T R A C TCOVID-19 virus disease is an infectious disease caused by SARS-Cov-2 virus, as the diagnostic imaging department play a remarkable role in detecting and diagnosing of COVID-19 in early stages, therefore, medical imaging workers should be aware of infection control guidelines to prevent the transmission of the disease. A cross-sectional descriptive study survey design was conducted from July 15, 2020 to September 15, 2020, in diagnostic imaging departments in Palestine, aimed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on medical imaging workers; in terms of infection sources, awareness and commitment to relevant safety guidelines. From a 205 valid responses, there was 54.5% governmental, 27.2% private, and 18.3% from NGOs sector. Female were 26.8% and 81.9% holding BA degree, about 41.2% are less than five years of experience. 36.1% had a previous positive COVID-19 result, of them there was 61.6% due to nosocomial infection. Only 63.2% were confidence of their hospital preparedness for COVID-19, 65.1% felt that their department is capable of dealing with COVID-19 patients, 43.3% revealed that they had training on handling COVID-19 patients, 58.7% reported that selfreading was their source of information about COVID-19, inadequate training or knowledge about hand hygiene and proper use of PPE was noted. Our findings emphasize the vital need of expanded COVID-19 pandemic training for medical imaging workers, as well as related protective measures.