ESTIMATING COVID-19 INFECTIONS IN HOSPITAL WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES

Junaid A Razzak; Junaid Ahmad Bhatti; Muhammad Ramzan Tahir; Omrana Pasha-Razzak

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant loss of life and major disruption of social and economic structures across the globe. 1 By March 27th, 2020, the total number of people infected exceeded 595,000 with over 27,000 deaths. 2 Even robust healthcare systems are challenged severely by the numbers of patients and the severity of the illness. 3 One of the major concerns in managing this outbreak is the safety of healthcare workers especially those working in the hospital settings. 4 The city of Wuhan in China has seen over 3,000 healthcare workers being infected while in Italy, where a major epidemic is ongoing has reported 7,145 healthcare worker infections including 51 physician deaths by March 27, 2020. 5 Ongoing shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) have resulted in heightened anxiety and in some cases refusal of care by the healthcare providers. 6 In the face of restrictions to PPE availability and usage, as well as case reports of deaths of doctors and nurses, hospital workers are worried about their health, their ability to keep working and possible mortality, as well as the risk to their families. 7 These concerns are not unfounded as the risk of infection appears inordinately high, with 20% of responding hospital workers in Italy becoming infected. 3 While hospital workers without the requisite PPE continue to see patients in many settings, an increasing number of hospital worker infections or increasing reluctance to provide care remains one of the major risks to the global response. 4 There is currently no published evidence on the expected number of infected hospital workers in the US or projections for other countries around the world. 8 The available data show that the risk All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.