Association between 2019-nCoV transmission and N95 respirator use

Xinghuan Wang; Zhenyu Pan; Zhenshun Cheng

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.18.20021881 doi: medRxiv preprint Cases of a novel type of contagious pneumonia were first discovered a month ago in Wuhan. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Chinese health authorities have determined and announced that a novel coronavirus (CoV), denoted as 2019-nCoV, had caused this pneumonia outbreak. 1,2 Existing evidence have confirmed the human-to-human transmission of 2019-nCoV. 3 We retrospectively collected infection data from 2 January to 22 January at six departments (Respiratory, ICU, Infectious Disease, Hepatobiliary Pancreatic Surgery, Trauma and Microsurgery, and Urology) from Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University. Medical staffs in these department follow differential routines of occupational protection: the medical staff in departments of Respiratory, ICU, and Infectious Disease wore N95 respirators, disinfected and clean hands frequently (N95 group); due to people were not enough for the knowledge of the 2019-nCoV in these early days of the pneumonia outbreak, the medical staff in the other three departments wore no medical masks, disinfected and clean hands occasionally (no-mask group). author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.