Abdul Muthalib Hamna, Hamad Alaa, Muhammad Javeed, Ifthikar Zainab, Albanyan Esam, Aljumaah Suliman, AlGhamdi Salem
Pediatric Infectious Diseases, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, Riyadh, SAU.
Medicine, Alfaisal University College of Medicine, Riyadh, SAU.
Cureus. 2023 Jul 15;15(7):e41919. doi: 10.7759/cureus.41919. eCollection 2023 Jul.
Introduction As of May 2023, the end of the pandemic, the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases reached more than 841,000 cases. Healthcare workers (HCWs) especially have been at the frontline during this pandemic and are at a higher chance of contracting COVID-19. Approximately half of all high-risk exposures were to healthcare personnel with COVID-19. While several tools for contact tracing were developed for the general public, contact tracing for infectious diseases in the healthcare setting is limited, and global testing of HCWs, or in-hospital digital tracing, is not performed in most facilities. The King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSH&RC) collaborated with the Infection Control and Health Information Technology Affairs (HITA) to create an automated COVID-19 contact tracing tool specifically for HCWs who worked at the institute. This study aims to describe the contact tracing experience at KFSH&RC. Methods A retrospective study was conducted to describe the use of an automated tool that was developed to assist in the contact tracing process and that was to be used by KFSH&RC employees who had been in contact with a COVID-19-positive individual. This tool is utilized for the early identification of possible COVID-19 cases and risk stratification of the exposed individuals. The tool can be accessed through the KFSH&RC website; it also collects information about the COVID-19 exposure rate among the different departments such as administration, capital projects/facilities, and healthcare at a tertiary care hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Results The tool has been utilized 7,353 times by contact cases. Approximately 7% of those tested later developed a COVID-19 infection. When assessing the positivity rates per department, The Environmental Services Department had the highest positivity rate of 28.21%, followed by Health Information Technology and Analytics (HITA), and then the Central Transportation Department. Conclusion This study acts as the first of its kind to describe the successful use of the healthcare contact tracing system in one of Saudi Arabia's largest hospitals (KFSH&RC) and describe the infection trends in different departments of the hospital. Through the tracing system, the departments with the highest COVID-19 infection occurrences at the hospital were identified in a timely manner, and safety protocols were implemented.
引言 截至2023年5月，疫情结束时，新冠病毒感染病例累计超过84.1万例。医护人员在此次疫情期间尤其处于前线，感染新冠病毒的风险更高。所有高风险暴露中约有一半是与感染新冠病毒的医护人员接触所致。虽然为普通公众开发了几种接触者追踪工具，但医疗机构中传染病的接触者追踪却很有限，大多数机构并未对医护人员进行全球检测或开展院内数字追踪。法赫德国王专科医院及研究中心（KFSH&RC）与感染控制和健康信息技术事务部（HITA）合作，专门为在该机构工作的医护人员创建了一个自动化的新冠病毒接触者追踪工具。本研究旨在描述KFSH&RC的接触者追踪经验。
方法 开展了一项回顾性研究，以描述一种自动化工具的使用情况，该工具旨在协助接触者追踪过程，供曾与新冠病毒阳性个体接触的KFSH&RC员工使用。此工具用于早期识别可能的新冠病毒病例以及对暴露个体进行风险分层。该工具可通过KFSH&RC网站访问；它还收集了沙特阿拉伯利雅得一家三级护理医院不同部门（如行政部门、基本建设项目/设施部门和医疗部门）的新冠病毒暴露率信息。
结果 接触病例使用该工具7353次。后来接受检测的人员中约7%感染了新冠病毒。在评估各部门的阳性率时，环境服务部的阳性率最高，为28.21%，其次是健康信息技术与分析部（HITA），然后是中央运输部。
结论 本研究首次描述了沙特阿拉伯最大的医院之一（KFSH&RC）成功使用医疗接触者追踪系统的情况，并描述了医院不同部门的感染趋势。通过追踪系统，及时确定了医院中新冠病毒感染发生率最高的部门，并实施了安全协议。
