ABSTRACT
Thirty-six anesthesia departments in 36 hospitals in four provinces of China where an outbreak of COVID-19 occurred were surveyed. We found that there were ten anesthesiologists (5 male and 5 female) who contracted the infection after performing intubation, as well as 4 nurses (1 male and 3 female) who contracted the infection after assisting with the intubation. This is a retrospective investigation and no intervention was applied. The numbers are presented as mean ± Standard Deviation (SD). We used Graphpad Prism (version 8.2.1 Windows version, GraphPad Software, San Diego). Fisher's exact test at a two-sided significance level of 0.05 was used to identify potential risk factor (s) for intubation providers. A P value less than 0.05 is considered statistically significant. A total of 211 anesthesiologists from four provinces were involved in the intubation of 664 patients with confirmed or potential COVID-19. Of these 644 patients, 640 cases were eventually confirmed with a diagnosis of COVID-19. Among the 211 anesthesiologists who performed intubation, 10 of them had a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 afterwards. Coughing is a risk factor for provider infection (Pâ¯=â¯0.0001). The number of intubation attempts (within three attempts) did not increase the risk of the infection. All of the affected anesthesiologists had symptoms 2-12 days after the intubation encounter (average 6⯱â¯3 days). All had radiological image evidence of bilateral pneumonia and all reported relatively mild symptoms. The affected doctors were out of clinical service for 20-60 days (average 46⯱â¯12 days). Seven of the doctors have been discharged from the hospital, but three of them remain hospitalized. Four nurses who assisted with intubations contracted COVID-19. One of these nurses was in critical condition but was eventually discharged with a loss of 50 days of clinical service. The remaining three nurses have had mild symptoms so far, but one is still hospitalized.