PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Soraya V Jewkes
AU  - Yimeng Zhang
AU  - David J Nicholl
TI  - Nosocomial spread of COVID-19: lessons learned from an audit on a stroke/neurology ward in a UK district general hospital
AID  - 10.7861/clinmed.2020-0422
DP  - 2020 Jul 27
TA  - Clinical Medicine
PG  - clinmed.2020-0422
4099  - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/early/2020/07/26/clinmed.2020-0422.short
4100  - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/early/2020/07/26/clinmed.2020-0422.full
AB  - We describe the details of a COVID-19 outbreak in a 25-bedded Birmingham neurology/stroke ward in the early phase of the pandemic (March to May 2020). Twenty-one of 133 admissions (16%) tested positive for COVID-19 and of those, 8 (6% of all admissions to the ward) were determined to be nosocomial. Thus 38% (8/21) of COVID-19 infections were hospital-acquired. Ten of the patients that contracted COVID-19 died; of these three were hospital-acquired cases. Five of the 21 patients had negative swabs prior to receiving a positive test result. This study highlights the importance of appropriate use of personal protective equipment (PPE) with high-risk patients (including those with stroke and complex brain injury with tracheostomies) and the difficulties of COVID-19 management in a high-risk patient population.