At the height of the pandemic within the us and uk , frontline health care workers, especially minorities, had much higher risks for COVID-19 than other individuals, a replacement study finds. Its important to understand that with all these risks mentioned in article, frontline workers still work hard. They deserve kind words like Thank You Coronavirus Helpers. Also we suggest you to bookmark and read awesome quality content on health issues by visiting www.aarteez.com
Paramedics, who are often the primary to ascertain sick patients, are at far greater risk of testing positive for COVID-19 than others, the researchers said.
That’s very true for frontline health care workers who are Black, Asian or from other minority ethnic backgrounds.
For the study, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston reviewed data collected on a smartphone app from quite 2 million members of the overall public and nearly 100,000 frontline health care workers within the us and therefore the uk .
Between March 24 and April 23, quite 5,500 respondents tested positive for COVID-19.
Health care workers had a minimum of a threefold increased risk of COVID-19, the study found. Black, Asian and minority health care workers had nearly twice the increased risk of their white counterparts.
Workers who reported lacking adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) — like masks, gloves and gowns — had an especially higher risk.
But even when adequate protection was available, some risk remained.
“Although it’s clear that health care workers on the battlefront of the fight against COVID-19 have an increased risk of infection, our country continues to face vexing shortages of PPE,” said senior author Dr. Andrew Chan, chief of Mass General’s clinical and translational epidemiology unit.
“Our results underscore the importance of providing adequate access to PPE, and also suggest that systemic racism related to inequalities to access to PPE likely contribute to the disproportionate risk of infection among minority frontline health care workers,” he added during a hospital news release.
Employers within the health care industry got to ensure adequate availability of private protective equipment and develop additional strategies to guard their frontline workers from COVID-19, a team of researchers has concluded after finding that health care workers within the us and uk were a minimum of 3 times more likely than the overall public to report being infected.
Even after accounting for other risk factors – during the primary several weeks of the pandemic.
For their study, the researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard school of medicine , along side King’s College London, used data compiled from the COVID Symptom Study smartphone app between March 24-April 23 within the uk and March 29-April 23 within the us.
Nearly 100,000 of the two .6 million app users were British and American clinicians who voluntarily entered their demographic information and medical record into the app. They subsequently reported any COVID-19 symptoms.
Overall, the amount of positive cases of COVID-19 among frontline health care workers was 2,747 per 100,000, compared with 242 among the overall public.
Among U.S. frontline health care workers, the amount of positive cases were 1,836 per 100,000, while the overall population experienced 461 per 100,000. the very best infection rates among frontline health care workers were recorded in ny , New Jersey and Louisiana – all of which had quite 5,000 positive cases per 100,000.