Surgical mask use by healthcare personnel to prevent COVID-19 spread in a long-term care facility

Toshikazu Abe; Yasuharu Tokuda; Hiroki Iriyama; Masao Iwagami; Akira Komori; Takehiro Sugiyama; Nanako Tamiya

doi:10.1002/jgf2.394

Surgical mask use by healthcare personnel to prevent COVID-19 spread in a long-term care facility

J Gen Fam Med. 2020 Oct 26;22(2):100-103. doi: 10.1002/jgf2.394. eCollection 2021 Mar.

Authors

Toshikazu Abe^{1

2}, Yasuharu Tokuda³, Hiroki Iriyama⁴, Masao Iwagami², Akira Komori⁴, Takehiro Sugiyama², Nanako Tamiya²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine Tsukuba Memorial Hospital Tsukuba Japan.
² Department of Health Services Research, Faculty of Medicine University of Tsukuba Tsukuba Japan.
³ Department of Medicine Muribushi Okinawa Center for Teaching Hospitals Okinawa Japan.
⁴ Department of General Medicine Juntendo University Tokyo Japan.

Abstract

Long-term care facilities are a recognized high-risk setting for severe outcomes during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak. This study describes a COVID-19 outbreak in a long-term care facility in Japan. The index case was a nurse who wore a surgical mask and used standard precautions. Of the 17 confirmed cases of COVID-19, 14 (14/93, 15.1%) were residents and three (3/69, 4.3%) were healthcare personnel (HCP); no visitors tested positive 0 (0/22, 0.0%). Mask utilization by HCP was not much effective in preventing COVID-19 transmission, even when interaction was not considered as being in close contact.

Keywords: COVID‐19; disease outbreaks; long‐term care; masks.