August 12, 2021

Hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infection in the UK’s first COVID-19 pandemic wave

The ISARIC4C team of researchers have assessed the magnitude of nosocomial (hospital-acquired) COVID-19 in acute and long-term NHS hospital facilities in the UK during the first epidemic wave (from March to July 2020).  This is an analysis of CO-CIN data.

The data has now been published as research letter in the Lancet.  (Research letters published in the Correspondence section include research findings and are externally peer-reviewed.  Unlike Articles containing original data, research letters are shorter and the research they contain is usually preliminary, exploratory, or reporting on early findings.)

Journalists dialled in to this press briefing to hear the authors of the study discuss the data and aspects such as:

– is it possible to know whether someone was infected while in hospital rather than before admission?

– what does the data say about the proportion of hospitalised people that might have been infected while in hospital?

– did this vary between different hospitals and/or different points during the first wave?

– are these data still applicable now at this point in the pandemic?

– do we know how to stop or reduce nosocomial infection, is it possible?

Speakers included:

Prof Calum Semple, Professor in Child Health and Outbreak Medicine, University of Liverpool, and ISARIC co-lead

Dr Jon Read, Lead author and Senior Lecturer in Biostatistics at Lancaster University

Dr Annemarie Docherty, Wellcome Clinical Research Career Development Fellow and an Honorary Consultant in Critical Care, University of Edinburgh

Dr Christopher Green, Senior Clinical Lecturer & Consultant Physician in Infectious Diseases, University of Birmingham