Risk factors and outcome among COVID-19 exposed and quarantined healthcare workers: A study on the status of existing practices of standard precautions

COVID transmission and contact tracing using WHO risk assement tool among frontline healthcare workers : Insights from a South Indian tertiary care centre

“…The average attack rate among high risk contacts (5%) was found to be more than three times(1.5%) that of the low risk contact, with peak attack rates of upto 20% and 2.5% among high risk and low risk contacts repsectively.This amounts to an attack rates ranging from from 1:3 to 1:8 among low risk contacts as compared to high risk contact. In our study, COVID positivity rates have been comparable among clinicians and nurses (4%) as compared to higher COVID positivity rates among nurses (21%) in comparison to doctors(13%) in a recent Indian study 22,23 which could be probably due to the better adherence to the infection control practices in our instituition. COVID positivity was observed to be negligible in COVID critical care areas as compared to non COVID areas where PPE policies had been strictly adhered to, underlining the importance of an effective PPE policy in thwarting the exposure risk .…”

“…COVID positivity was observed to be negligible in COVID critical care areas as compared to non COVID areas where PPE policies had been strictly adhered to, underlining the importance of an effective PPE policy in thwarting the exposure risk . The HCW positivity was more likely to be acquired from other HCWs sharing the same space rather than a patient related exposure who has shared the same space 22 . The findings from our study highlights the need for policies to avoid maskless activities like dining together and to enhance the protection in shared spaces with usage of mask and social distancing.…”

Factors influencing knowledge, awareness, and compliance with standard precautions among psychiatric nurses

“…Although compliance with hand hygiene practice of health care providers was reportedly less than 40% (Khubrani et al, 2018), these were pre-COVID-19 studies; it is an essential compliance factor that need to be emphasized during the pandemic (Kumar et al, 2020). Even in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2020) and World Health Organization (2020) guidelines, hand hygiene was the main recommendation in the fight against COVID-19.…”

“…In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the problems of the mental health infection system, and efforts to find active countermeasures for these problems are still underway (Rovers et al, 2020;Xiang et al, 2020). As psychiatric nurses were suddenly assigned to a ward to care for COVID-19 patients, or a manpower shortage occurred (Kumar et al, 2020;Ward-Miller et al, 2021), a "paradigm shift" in the form of work may be underway at psychiatric wards. Therefore, future psychiatric nurses must also demonstrate infection control skills outside the ward.…”

“…Nurses have a higher risk of infection and are often exposed to more infections than other health care workers (Ayed et al, 2015). Globally, the occupation with the highest novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) infection rate among health care workers is nursing (Kumar et al, 2020), indicating a need to pay attention to this issue.…”