A high percentage of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections among health care workers appear to go undetected, often because they have mild or no symptoms and workplace testing isn’t sufficient, investigators from a multistate hospital network reported.
The study was conducted by the Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness in the Critically Ill (IVY) Network, a collaboration of US medical centers that studies influenza and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The network enrolled 3248 clinicians who regularly cared for patients with the disease between April and June at 13 of the network’s medical centers located in 12 states.
Overall, 194, or 6%, of the participants tested positive for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. Among them, 69% reported that they had never been diagnosed with COVID-19, 29% didn’t recall having any symptoms during the previous few months, and 44% didn’t suspect they’d had the disease.