A study developed by the Faculty of Medicine of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) analyzed the first 100 deaths that occurred as a result of covid-19 in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte. It drew the attention of researchers that almost a quarter of them may be associated with intra-hospital transmission of the coronavirus that causes the disease.
The records of 19 public and private hospitals were examined. It is the first detailed regional study in Brazil of early deaths from the covid-19 pandemic.
Subscribe to O POVO+
Get access to all exclusive content, columnists, unlimited access and discounts in stores, pharmacies and much more.
Related news:
In-hospital transmission occurs when the patient enters the hospital to be treated for another health condition and becomes infected during the hospital stay. The National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) defines some criteria for framing this type of contagion.
“It is the case of the person who is admitted to the hospital without a covid-19 infection and, after seven days, manifests symptoms, with an epidemiological link of transmission. If there is no certain transmission link, the 14-day interval must be considered. If she starts with symptoms of covid-19 after 14 days in hospital, then it is considered a hospital infection”, explains infectologist Karina Napoles, who coordinated the research and gathered the results in his master’s thesis defended last year.
In addition to 14 cases that met Anvisa’s criteria, the research listed as possible hospital infection the other occurrences in which the patient was admitted to the hospital with another diagnosis and presented symptoms of covid-19 at least two days later. “As the incubation period for the coronavirus varies from 1 to 14 days, the person can catch it and show symptoms in two days”, justifies Karina.
The first 100 deaths in Belo Horizonte occurred between March 30 and June 19, 2020. According to the mapping, there were a total of 24 cases in which the contagion may have occurred in a hospital environment.
The results of the study were recently forwarded in an article to the Medical Journal of Minas Gerais and researchers believe they can contribute to better practices in health management. According to Karina, hospital transmission was little detected at the beginning of the pandemic.
“It was thought that covid-19 would arrive with the symptoms well manifested. I observed that in a certain hospital that registered several cases of transmission, for example, there was a CT scan of an elderly patient that took a while to be checked. Doctors change shifts, they do rotation shifts. And that took a while to analyze and diagnose covid-19. It’s not that there was negligence, but little thought was given to the possibility of being covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic. The elderly person had few specific symptoms of covid-19 and we were still not used to these cases”.
According to her, with the high risk of nosocomial transmission, the analysis of the tomography would need to have taken place more quickly. The researcher also considers that patients who had a confirmed diagnosis of covid-19 should not have shared the same space with those who only had suspicion. The separation of beds would be a fundamental sanitary measure.
“You can’t even mix the suspects, because one suspect can be positive and the other negative. And then it ends up transmitting. We know that, often, the hospital has no structure, no conditions. But the main challenge, in my view, is this: to guarantee the division of beds”.
The survey also profiled the victims. There were 47 men and 53 women. In the breakdown by age, 71 were over 60 years old. In addition, 57 were brown or black. On average, deaths occurred 15 days after the onset of symptoms. The analysis also showed that hypertension was present in 47 patients and diabetes in 32.
Doubts, Reviews and Suggestions? Talk to us
Tags
