Prospective health surveillance for COVID-19 among health care workers at a university medical center in Taiwan, January to June 2020.

BACKGROUND

Healthcare personnel (HCP) at the front line of care are exposed to occupational hazards that place them at risk for infection, which then endanger patient safety and compromise the capability of the healthcare workforce. As of March 8, 2021 more than 420,170 HCP in US had been infected with SARS CoV-2 with 1388 deaths. In two Taiwan hospitals COVID-19 outbreaks involved HCP and resulted in shutdown of service. This report describes our prospective health surveillance of the HCP and COVID-19 containment measures in a teaching hospital in Taiwan during Jan. 1 through June 30, 2020.

METHODS

We prospectively monitored incidents, defined as an HCP with the predefined symptoms, reported by HCP through the web-based system. HCP were managed based on an algorithm that included SARS CoV-2 RNA PCR testing. Infection prevention and control policy/practice were reviewed.

RESULTS

This hospital took care of 17 confirmed COVID-19 cases during the study period and the first Case was admitted on January 23, 2020. Among the 14,210 HCP, there were 367 incident events. Of 283 HCP tested for SARS CoV-2, 179 had predefined symptoms. These included 10 HCP who met the national case definition for COVID-19 infection and 169 based on Extended COVID-19 Community Screening program. The other 104 asymptomatic HCP were tested based on hospital policy. All of them had tested negative.

CONCLUSION

We attribute our success in preventing COVID-19 infections among HCP to rapid, proactive, decisive, integrated national and institutional response in the early stages of the epidemic.