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| - The study was conducted at Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar, a national healthcare system with 14 hospitals and over 28,000 employees. A total of 16,912 staff members were tested for SARS-CoV-2 between March 10 and June 24, 2020 with 1,799 (10.6%) testing positive. Nurses and midwives had the highest number of infections (33.2% of all infected HCWs) followed by non-clinical support service staff (31.3%), administrative staff (14.6%), allied health professionals (12.7%), physicians (5.2% and other clinical support staff (2.9%). Among 671 infected HCW surveyed by the infection prevention and control team immediately after the positive COVID-19 test was reported, exposure to a family member or roommate with confirmed infection each were reported by 9.5%. Two-thirds of the infected HCWs were symptomatic with fever (34.6%), cough (32.2%) and sore throat (15.8%) being the most commonly reported symptoms. Among the survey respondents, 78 (11.6%) were hospitalized, 9 (1.3%) required supplemental oxygen, 4 (0.6%) were admitted to the intensive care unit) and 2 (0.3%) required mechanical ventilation. There were no deaths. To understand the transmission dynamics and impact of facility designation as COVID-19 or non-COVID-19 facility, we conducted a focused follow-up telephone survey on 393 COVID-19 positive HCW 1-6 weeks after diagnosis. Only 5% of respondents reported acquiring the virus from working at a COVID-19 designated facility while the remaining 95% reported working at a non-COVID-19 facility and acquired the infection from accidental exposure to a colleague (45%) or to a patient (29%). Among infected HCW at COVID-19 designated facilities, 82% reported used full PPE at all times while 68% of infected HCW at non-COVID-19 facilities reported using PPE as directed.
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