Modelling the impact of healthcare worker masking to reduce nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 transmission under varying adherence, prevalence, and transmission settings.
Research Square
2024
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Example: if you select the 1-year option for an article published in 2019 and a metric category shows 90%, that means that the article or review is performing better than 90% of the other articles/reviews published in that journal in 2019. If you select the 3-year option for the same article published in 2019 and the metric category shows 90%, that means that the article or review is performing better than 90% of the other articles/reviews published in that journal in 2019, 2018 and 2017.
Citation Benchmarking is provided by Scopus and SciVal and is different from the metrics context provided by PlumX Metrics.
Article Description
Objectives To understand the scenarios where health care worker (HCW) masking is most impactful for preventing nosocomial transmission. Methods A mathematical agent-based model of nosocomial spread with masking interventions was used. Masking adherence, community prevalence, disease transmissibility and proportion of breakroom (unmasked) interactions were varied. The effectiveness of masks for reducing transmission to and from the wearer was also varied. The main outcome measure is the total number of nosocomial infections in patients and health care worker populations over a simulated three-month period. Results HCW masking around patients and universal HCW masking reduces median patient nosocomial infections by 15% and 18% respectively. HCW-HCW interactions are the dominant source of HCW infections and universal HCW masking reduces HCW nosocomial infections by 55%. Increasing adherence shows a roughly linear reduction in infections. Even in scenarios where a high proportion of interactions are unmasked ‘breakroom’ interactions, masking is still an effective tool assuming adherence is high outside of these areas. The optimal scenarios where masking is most impactful are those where community prevalence is at a medium level (around 2%) and transmissibility is high. Conclusions Masking by HCWs is an effective way to reduce nosocomial transmission to both patients and, especially, HCWs at all levels of mask effectiveness and adherence. Increases in adherence to a masking policy can provide a small but important impact. HCW-HCW transmission is the dominant source of HCW infections so universal HCW masking policies are most impactful should policy makers wish to target HCW infections. The more transmissible a virus/ variant in circulation is the more impactful masking by HCWs is for reducing nosocomial infections. Policy makers should consider implementing masking at the point when community prevalence is optimum for maximum impact.
Bibliographic Details
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
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