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ATLANTA – In a large study of U.S. health care workers in three states, researchers found that community exposure to COVID-19 was associated with COVID-19 infection in health care workers, but specific occupational activities in a hospital or health care setting were not. The findings were published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open by researchers from Emory University in Atlanta, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, University of Maryland in Baltimore, Rush University in Chicago and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
More than 24,000 health care workers took part in the study between April and August 2020 across four large health care systems which collaborate in the CDC’s Prevention Epicenter Program and conduct innovative infection prevention research. Each site conducted voluntary COVID-19 antibody testing on its health care workers, as well as offered a questionnaire/survey on the employees’ occupational activities and possible exposures to individuals with COVID-19 infection both inside and outside the workplace. They also looked at three-digit residential zip-code prefixes to determine COVID-19 prevalence in communities.