Assessing the Risks of COVID-19 Transmission from Healthcare Workers to Their Social and Professional Contacts

Introduction: There are few published studies on characteristics and mechanisms of COVID-19 transmission from health workers to third parties, including their family members, in the scientific literature.

Objective: To assess risks for transmission of the novel coronavirus disease from healthcare workers to their social and professional contacts.

Materials and methods: We surveyed 178 healthcare workers who had previously recovered from COVID-19 using a specially developed questionnaire. The work used the analytical epidemiological method of the case-control study. Statistical analysis was performed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS).

Results: We established a high risk of disease transmission from healthcare workers infected with COVID-19 in the occupational setting. The relative risk of developing the disease was 1.92 times (p < 0.05) for household members and 1.56 times (p = 0.1973) higher for colleagues. The findings showed that the relative risk of COVID-19 transmission to household members was associated with disease severity in the subjects. The results also demonstrated positive correlations between COVID-19 in family members and the following factors: duration of social contacts during normal conversation and loud talking or singing, physical activity, social distance kept when communicating with the diseased, apartment floor space per person, and the intensity of natural ventilation of the living area.

Conclusion: Our assessment of risks of COVID-19 transmission from health workers to their social and/or professional contacts showed that family members and colleagues were at the highest risk of infection. Its results convincingly prove the need for further studies of working conditions of healthcare workers and the expediency of improving the methodology for assessing the risk of spread of occupational infections.

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