TY - JOUR T1 - Nosocomial spread of COVID-19: lessons learned from an audit on a stroke/neurology ward in a UK district general hospital JF - Clinical Medicine JO - Clin Med SP - e173 LP - e177 DO - 10.7861/clinmed.2020-0422 VL - 20 IS - 5 AU - Soraya V Jewkes AU - Yimeng Zhang AU - David J Nicholl Y1 - 2020/09/01 UR - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/20/5/e173.abstract N2 - 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. ER -