Estimating Coronavirus Disease 2019 Infection Risk in Health Care Workers

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) due to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been posing a public health threat since early 2020. Pandemic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 has already caused more than 3.1 million infections and 224 000 deaths globally over a period of 4 months. The overwhelming number of individuals who are infected not only leads to widespread community lockdowns, but also paralyzes health care systems and puts health care workers (HCWs) at potential risk. Although cases of HCWs who are infected owing to community or nosocomial acquisition of SARS-CoV-2 have been receiving unparalleled attention in social media and are increasingly reported in many parts of the world, as of yet there have been few scientific reports specifically looking into this aspect. The studies by Kluytmans-van den Bergh et el¹ and Lai et al² report on SARS-CoV-2 infection rates of HCWs in 2 countries. Kluytmans-van den Bergh at el¹ described a group of HCWs with predominantly community acquisition of SARS-CoV-2 in the Netherlands,¹ whereas Lai et al² presented another group of HCWs with predominantly nosocomial acquisition of SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, China, where cases of COVID-19 were first reported.