SARS-CoV-2 AMONG FRONT LINE HEALTH CARE WORKERS

Objective: To determine clinical presentations and source among severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 positive health care workers of tertiary care hospital. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Combined Military Hospital Rawalpindi, from Mar to Jun 2020. Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted by using a questionnaire for risk assessment regardingexposure to Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) virus and practices of participants. Health care workers whowere exposed or had fever, cough, shortness of breath, were asked to undergo semi-quantitative real-time reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction test for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus 2 onnasopharyngeal and oro-pharyngeal swabs. Results: Out of the 92 health care workers who tested positive, 80/92 (86.95%) were males, 12/92 (13.04%)females. Asymptomatic cases were 53/92 (57.60%) and 39/92 (42.40%) were symptomatic, 10/92 (10.8%) of theparticipants were doctors, 06/92 (6.52%) nurses, 36/92 (39.14%) paramedics and 40/92 (43.47%) were hospitalauxiliary staff. Among symptomatic cases, 28/39 (71.79%) developed fever with myalgia, 22/39 fever alone,23/39 (58.97%) headache, 13/39 (33%) sore throat, 15/39 (38%) runny nose, 11/39 (28.20%) mild shortness ofbreath on exertion, 7/39 (17.94%) diarrhea and 5/39 (12.82%) experienced loss of taste. Conclusion: As the Corona Virus Disease 2019 pandemic continues, chances of health care workers gettinginfected are high so it is critical to improve the knowledge of Health care workers. Educational interventions and further studies are warranted in this regard.