An Analysis of Risk Assessment of Health Care Workers Exposed to COVID -19 Cases

Abstract

Introduction: People most at risk of acquiring the disease are those who are in contact with or care for patients with COVID-19. This inevitably places health care workers (HCWs) at high risk of infection, especially when there is a breach in the personal protection while managing patients for categorization of risk in exposure to COVID-19 in health care workers, a risk assessment tool in the form of questionnaire has been devised by The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW), Directorate General of Health Services after the risk assessment of HCWs as high or low risk, management is done according to the recommendations. Materials & Methods: We analyzed the data collected by the Risk Assessment Committee members of Health care workers exposed to COVID 19 for a period of 1year from June 2020 to June 2021. After the interview of HCWs, they were categorized as high or low risk. Results: Risk assessment committee(RAC) members interviewed a total of 1660 HCW contacts of 144 index cases in one year period from June 2020 to June 2021. Our contacts include doctors, nurses, technicians, sanitation worker and other staffs. Index cases were mostly HCWs except few, who were patients. On an average, we used to receive a list of 8-12 contacts for each index case from the Contact Tracing Committee. Out of 1660 contacts, we found 241(14.5%) were high risk and 1419 (85.4%) low risk. Conclusion: Risk assessment of HCWs not only reduces the burden of disease in HCWs, but also prevents unnecessary quarantine of low risk category and shortage of man power as more scientific evidence on COVID- 19 becomes available, more accurate validated risk prediction scores will facilitate more precise estimates of individual risk.