Clinical Characteristics of 54 medical staff with COVID-19: A retrospective study in a single center in Wuhan, China

BACKGROUND: In December 2019, an outbreak of the SARS-Cov-2 infection occurred in Wuhan, and rapidly spread to worldwide, which has attracted many people's concerns about the patients. However, studies on the infection status of medical personnels is still lacking. METHODS: 54 cases of SARS-Cov-2 infected medical staff from Tongji Hospital between January 7th to February 11th of 2020 were analyzed in this retrospective study. Clinical and epidemiological characteristics were compared between different groups by statistical method. RESULTS: From January 7 to February 11, 2020, 54 medical staff of Tongji Hospital were hospitalized due to COVID-19. Most of them were from other clinical departments (72.2%) rather than emergency department (3.7%) or medical technology departments (18.5%). Among the 54 COVID-19 patients, the distribution of age had a significant difference between non-severe type and severe/critical cases (median age: 47 years vs. 38 years, p=0.0015). However, there was no statistical difference in terms of gender distribution and the first symptoms between theses two groups. Furthermore, we observed that the lesion regions in SARS-Cov-2 infected lungs with severe-/critical-type of medical staff were more likely to exhibit lesions in the right upper lobe (31.7% vs. 0%, P=0.028) and right lung (61% vs. 18.2%, P=0.012). CONCLUSIONS: Based on our findings with medical staff infection data, we suggest training for all hospital staff to prevent infection and preparation of sufficient protection and disinfection materials. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.