Hospital Support Staff Face Far Higher COVID Risk

Researchers screened 3,904 employees and clinicians at a New Jersey hospital between late April and late June for the SARS-CoV-2 virus and for lgG-antibodies to the virus, whose presence suggests past recent infection. The study in Open Forum Infectious Diseases finds these employees at higher risk than previously thought. “The risk to workers in health care settings with little or no patient contact has attracted relatively little attention to date, but our results suggest potentially high infection rates in this group,” says lead author Emily S. Barrett, an associate professor at Rutgers University School of Public Health and a member of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute. To read the full story.