Background: Medical workers are a group that is particularly vulnerable to infection during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Objectives: The study aimed to assess the risk of COVID-19 infection and its course in the medical staff of a COVID-only and a non-COVID hospital.
Material and methods: The observational study included 732 participants who were medical workers. The study was conducted between June 2020 and December 2020, before widespread COVID-19 immunization was introduced.
Results: Of the 732 employees of the hospitals, 377 had a history of COVID-19. The risk of disease was twice as high in the medical staff of the COVID-only hospital compared to the medical staff of the non-COVID hospital (odds ratio (OR) = 2.0; p < 0.001). Among medical personnel, 20.6% of the participants were asymptomatic and 6.4% required hospitalization. For the non-COVID hospital, the employees who were most frequently infected with COVID-19 were nurses/paramedics/medical caretakers. The factor influencing the risk of infection was body mass index (BMI; OR = 1.05; p = 0.004). The risk of COVID-19 infection was lower in the influenza vaccine group (OR = 2.23, p < 0.001).
Conclusions: The study results indicate that employees of the hospital treating only COVID patients have a higher risk of infection. Previous observations on factors predisposing to COVID-19 infection like gender and BMI were confirmed. However, the observations carried out on the studied population did not confirm the influence of other factors, such as the coexistence of chronic diseases (apart from diabetes) on the risk of developing COVID-19. In addition, we noticed that seasonal influenza vaccination has a beneficial effect in patients with COVID-19 infection.
Keywords: COVID-19; epidemiology; medical staff; risk of infection.