Study: 11% of those infected with “Corona” caught the virus in hospitals

A recent study revealed that at least one in 10 patients who sat in hospitals due to infection with “Corona” during the first wave, contracted the virus while receiving treatment in a ward for another health problem, according to the newspaper “The Independent”.

Poor prevention measures and limited testing at the start of the outbreak in the UK left people admitted to hospital exposed to the virus as it spread between staff and patients.

The full extent of this transmission was explored in a new nationwide study showing that as of August 1, 2020, an average of 11.3 per cent of Covid-19 patients in UK hospitals had been infected after admission.

That percentage may have reached 19.6 per cent in mid-May, long after the UK passed its first peak, research from the ASARIC program shows.

Out of a total of 82,624 people who received hospital treatment due to “Corona”, between 5,000 and 11,000 are suspected of contracting the virus while they were inside.

However, the scientists behind the study, which was published in The Lancet, said this is likely an underestimate "because we did not include patients who may have been infected but were discharged before they were diagnosed".

The researchers identified patients who were hospitalized using a combination of their date of admission and the date of onset of symptoms, and estimates of when they were first exposed to the virus based on the known incubation period.

Residential community-care hospitals and mental health hospitals were found to have higher levels of hospital-acquired injuries - at 61.9 and 67.5 per cent, respectively - compared to hospitals providing acute and general care (9.7 per cent) between March and August 2020.