New coronavirus infected 40 staff in single Wuhan hospital: Study
WASHINGTON: Forty health care workers were infected with the novel coronavirus by patients at a single Wuhan hospital in January, a new study has found, underscoring the risks to those at the frontlines of the growing epidemic.
One patient who was admitted to the surgical department was presumed to have infected 10 health care workers, according to the paper that was authored by doctors at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Friday (Feb 7).
Seventeen patients who were hospitalized for other reasons also became infected by the coronavirus. A total of 138 patients got the virus in a period spanning Jan 1 to Jan 28, with hospital-associated transmission accounting for 41 per cent of all cases.