(Reuters) – With COVID-19 vaccination coverage incomplete among residents and staff at long-term care facilities, researchers have come up with a way to limit transmission in those settings: keep unvaccinated staff away from unvaccinated patients.
In a report posted on medRxiv ahead of peer review, they advise based on their computer models that unvaccinated healthcare workers be assigned to work with vaccinated patients. In that scenario, if a healthcare worker becomes infected but does not realize it and shows up to work, “then the chance of onward spread is significantly reduced … leading to lower rates in the facility as a whole,” said study co-author Joshua Weitz of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Likewise, it is preferable to assign vaccinated healthcare workers to care for unvaccinated patients, his team found. “Unvaccinated residents are at a higher risk of infection, and in the event that a resident becomes infected … there is a far lower risk of onward transmission” if the people caring for them are vaccinated, Weitz said.
“These facilities have a responsibility to aim to reduce infection rates amidst a public health emergency,” Weitz added. “Our analysis reveals that cohorting could help facilities do more to prevent infection control even in the event of partially vaccinated populations.”
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2Wgejaz medRxiv, online July 20, 2021.
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