Register-based surveillance of COVID-19 in nursing homes.

BACKGROUND

This study describes results from the surveillance of COVID-19 infections in nursing homes in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

MATERIAL AND METHOD

All data in the study are from Beredt C19, an emergency preparedness register that collects data from a wide range of sources. We used the data set 'Health and Care' in the Norwegian Registry for Primary Health Care to define a nursing home population and linked this to other sources in the emergency preparedness register to estimate incidence rates, hospitalisations and deaths related to COVID-19 among nursing home residents in 2020. A log-binomial regression model was used to analyse the risk of death related to COVID-19.

RESULTS

Of the 83 114 persons who were included in the study, 35 758 (43 %) were older than 80 years. We found that 570 persons (0.69 %) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in 2020. A total of 19 041 residents died during the study period, whereof 248 (1.3 %) deaths were related to COVID-19. The relative risk of dying from COVID-19 rose with age and was highest for long-term nursing home residents.

INTERPRETATION

Nursing home residents have a high background mortality, so despite the high lethality of SARS-CoV-2 infection and the high proportion of the COVID-19-related deaths that have occurred in nursing homes, COVID-19-related deaths accounted for a relatively minor proportion of all deaths among nursing home residents.