Viral and bacterial upper respiratory tract infection in hospital health care workers over time and association with symptoms

Raina MacIntyre, C.; Chughtai, Abrar Ahmad; Zhang, Yi; Seale, Holly; Yang, Peng; Chen, Joshua; Pan, Yang; Zhang, Daitao; Wang, Quanyi

Being a healthcare provider has been identified as a major risk factor for respiratory infections [38, 39] , however even within HCWs, the risk varies significantly. Hand hygiene, use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and working on intensive care units (ICUs) have been associated with risk of influenza [40] . Interestingly, factors such as vaccination status, performing high-risk procedures, working on respiratory and paediatric wards and smoking were not found to be significant in predicting bacterial colonisation in this study. Smoking, influenza vaccination status and ward type in hospitals have been previously identified as risk factors for respiratory infection in various groups [40, 41] however our findings suggest that such risk factors may not be absolute and may vary in different situations. The effect of vaccination also needs to be studied. Some studies show that pneumococcal vaccination may reduce colonisation with vaccine-serotype pneumococcal infection, though replacement by other strains reduces the overall effect [1] . Previous studies showed that medical masks and respirators reduce the risk of bacterial respiratory infections [42] , which further supports the occurrence of nosocomial transmission of bacteria.