TY  - JOUR
AU  - Sahoo, Durgesh Prasad
AU  - Singh, Arvind Kumar
AU  - Sahu, Dinesh Prasad
AU  - Pradhan, Somen Kumar
AU  - Patro, Binod Kumar
AU  - Batmanabane, Gitanjali
AU  - Mishra, Baijayantimala
AU  - Behera, Bijayini
AU  - Das, Ambarish
AU  - Dora, G Susmita
AU  - Anand, L.
AU  - Azhar, S M
AU  - Nair, Jyolsna
AU  - Panigrahi, Sasmita
AU  - Akshaya, R.
AU  - Sahoo, Bimal Kumar
AU  - Sahu, Subhakanta
AU  - Sahoo, Suchismita
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/10/21
TI  - Hospital-Based Contact Tracing of Patients With COVID-19 and Health Care Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Eastern India: Cross-sectional Study
JO  - JMIR Form Res
SP  - e28519
VL  - 5
IS  - 10
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - SARS-CoV-2
KW  - risk categorization
KW  - health care personnel
KW  - virus transmission
KW  - contact tracing
KW  - pandemic
KW  - risk stratification
AB  - Background: The contact tracing and subsequent quarantining of health care workers (HCWs) are essential to minimizing the further transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection and mitigating the shortage of HCWs during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Objective: This study aimed to assess the yield of contact tracing for COVID-19 cases and the risk stratification of HCWs who are exposed to these cases. Methods: This was an analysis of routine data that were collected for the contact tracing of COVID-19 cases at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar, in Odisha, India. Data from March 19 to August 31, 2020, were considered for this study. COVID-19 cases were admitted patients, outpatients, or HCWs in the hospital. HCWs who were exposed to COVID-19 cases were categorized, per the risk stratification guidelines, as high-risk contacts or low-risk contacts Results: During contact tracing, 3411 HCWs were identified as those who were exposed to 360 COVID-19 cases. Of these 360 cases, 269 (74.7%) were either admitted patients or outpatients, and 91 (25.3%) were HCWs. After the risk stratification of the 3411 HCWs, 890 (26.1%) were categorized as high-risk contacts, and 2521 (73.9%) were categorized as low-risk contacts. The COVID-19 test positivity rates of high-risk contacts and low-risk contacts were 3.8% (34/890) and 1.9% (48/2521), respectively. The average number of high-risk contacts was significantly higher when the COVID-19 case was an admitted patient (number of contacts: mean 6.6) rather than when the COVID-19 case was an HCW (number of contacts: mean 4.0) or outpatient (number of contacts: mean 0.2; P=.009). Similarly, the average number of high-risk contacts was higher when the COVID-19 case was admitted in a non–COVID-19 area (number of contacts: mean 15.8) rather than when such cases were admitted in a COVID-19 area (number of contacts: mean 0.27; P<.001). There was a significant decline in the mean number of high-risk contacts over the study period (P=.003). Conclusions: Contact tracing and risk stratification were effective and helped to reduce the number of HCWs requiring quarantine. There was also a decline in the number of high-risk contacts during the study period. This indicates the role of the implementation of hospital-based, COVID-19–related infection control strategies. The contact tracing and risk stratification approaches that were designed in this study can also be implemented in other health care settings. 
SN  - 2561-326X
UR  - https://formative.jmir.org/2021/10/e28519
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/28519
UR  - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34596569
DO  - 10.2196/28519
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/28519
ER  -