Risk assessment of coronavirus disease 2019 among healthcare workers in Neyshabur, 2020

Abstract

Background: Since the onset of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the world, healthcare workers have been exposed to this virus due to their important roles and responsibilities in the care and treatment of patients with COVID-19. In this regard, doing risk assessments in healthcare centres helps significantly to control and reduce COVID-19. Therefore, this study aimed to assess COVID-19 risk and its association with clinical symptoms among healthcare workers in Neyshabur. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 483 healthcare workers of Neyshabur medical centres in 2020. In order to collect the data, a checklist consisting of three sections of demographic variables, risk assessment and clinical symptoms was used. Statistical analyses were performed by using the STATA software version 14. The significance level was set at P <0.05. Results: The mean ± standard deviation age of the study population was 34.2 ± 8.4 years. Out of 483 participants, 55 (11.4%) were identified as high-risk exposure category, 52 (10.8%) as medium-risk category and 77 (15.9%) as low-risk category. According to multiple logistic regression models, it was observed that cough (odds ratio (OR)=2.2; P =0.001), running nose (OR=3.3; P <0.001), suffocation (OR=3.2; P <0.001), shivering (OR=3.4; P =0.001), nausea (OR=3.3; P =0.001), vomiting (OR=7.2; P =0.025), diarrhoea (OR=3.0; P =0.001), muscular pain (OR=2.1; P =0.005), joint pain (OR=2.2; P =0.005) and fatigue (OR=2.1; P =0.003) were significantly associated with risk assessment. Conclusions: The findings showed that more than one-fifth of studied healthcare workers were at high or medium-risk exposure of COVID-19. Cough and fatigue had the most frequencies in healthcare workers with high or medium-risk exposure, and also, vomiting and shivering had a stronger association with risk assessment status.