Miss Karen McKenna1, Professor Anastasia Hutchinson2, Associate Professor Stéphane Bouchoucha2, Associate Professor Eric Lau2
1ACIPC, Melbourne, Australia, 2Deakin University, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Burwood, Australia
Biography:
Karen McKenna is an Infection Preventionist with extensive experience in health service operations. She has led numerous initiatives in infection prevention, including HAI surveillance, outbreak response, and contact tracing within metropolitan health networks. Karen is working as an IPC consultant with ACIPC, and is a PhD candidate at Deakin University.
Abstract:
Introduction
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospital systems were unprepared for the scale and urgency of contact tracing required during a pandemic response. Existing infection prevention frameworks lacked infrastructure for real-time surveillance and response, resulting in labour-intensive processes and manual data collection. This study evaluates the outcomes of contact tracing for COVID-19 among healthcare-workers in a metropolitan health service.
Methods
Between 2020-2021, real-time contact tracing data were collected for all healthcare-workers with COVID-19, their identified contacts, and healthcare-workers notified of an exposure. Case and contact definitions were based on the Department of health guidelines.
Results
Of the 1667 healthcare-worker records captured, 167 healthcare-workers (10%) returned positive COVID-19 PCR results (index cases), 1500 healthcare workers were identified contacts or had known exposures to COVID-19. Of the index cases, 56% were registered nurses/midwives, followed by 13% medical staff. Exposure location was unknown for 86 cases (51%), followed by 52 household exposures (31%) and 24 workplace exposures (14%). Of the contacts/exposures, 606 (40%) were workplace exposures, and 428 (29%) household contacts.
Conclusion
Frontline healthcare-workers exposures to COVID-19 placed them at increased health risks, and resulted in decreased workforce capacity that had the potential to impact patient care. This study identified the relatively low number of COVID-19 cases and high volume of contacts indicate that contact definitions were broad, potentially leading to high staff furlough. Comparison of positive workplace exposure and volume of contacts between facilities may give more evidence on the benefits of contact tracing/furlough.