Impact of the first pandemic wave of COVID-19 on health-care workers in a private hospital

Health care workers (HCW) are at higher risk to get sick from SARS-CoV-2 than general population, so they must use personal protective equipment (PPE) in all care situations. The HCW at Clinica las Condes (CLC) that required a sick leave (SD during the study period was evaluated by the Administrative Institution according to Law 16,744, which categorized each case of close contact (CC) or confirmed case, as community-acquired (CA) or health care-associated (HCA). In addition, all of them were traced by the HR and Infection Control team, to find out health status, risk factors and evolution. The aims were to characterize the confirmed cases and CC, their association with key events that occurred in the institution and the community between February 12th and July 31th. 21% of the HCW had to take SL in the period and in 12,97% infection was confirmed by PCR. Distribution by sex and age did not differ from the distribution of total HCW in CLC. Among confirmed cases, most of them were HCA, whereas in the CC group the majority were CA. Regarding HCA cases, it stands out that the first case occurred 63 days after the first COVID-19 inpatient in CLC when the epidemic was already spread in the community, which reflects the effectiveness of the preventive measures adopted within CLC.