reported the first national information on how the pandemic is hitting physicians, nurses and other health care experts.
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The data is necessary brand-new info but not always surprising, stated Dr. Anne Schuchat, who is running the federal company’s reaction to the outbreak. Medical personnel have likewise been hit hard in other countries: Media reports said about 10 percent of cases in Italy and Spain were health care employees.
Since the middle of recently, the CDC had reports of more than 315,000 cases in the U.S. The new report concentrated on about 49,000 for which scientists had information on whether or not they operated in healthcare. About 9,300, or 19 percent, of them were medical professionals. That included 27 who passed away.
However the information varied in how complete it was, researchers said. In 12 states that did a better job reporting on whether patients operated in medication, around 11 percent of cases were health care employees.
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Compared with U.S. cases overall, bigger proportions of identified healthcare employees were women, were white, and were young or middle-aged adults. That’s consistent with the demographics of who operates in health care, scientists said.
About 10 percent of the healthcare employees were hospitalized with signs, compared to 21 percent to 31 percent of overall cases. That may show the younger age of the employees, as well as prioritization of testing for health care employees, the report stated.
A little over half of a group of infected health care employees studied stated their only known direct exposure to the virus was at work, however researchers say it’s tough to know for sure how different individuals captured the bug.
A second report launched Tuesday looked at 3 health care workers who became infected after treating a patient in Solano County, California, in what was among the first circumstances of disease spread to medical personnel in the U.S. Workers didn’t initially know the patient was contaminated with the coronavirus. All three did not use eye protection or some other types of protective equipment a minimum of part of the time they were caring for the individual, scientists said.
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