key: cord-0982821-pvt9bswf
authors: Sookaromdee, Pathum; Wiwanitkit, Viroj
title: COVID-19 among medical personnel in the operating room
date: 2020-04-03
journal: Infection control and hospital epidemiology
DOI: 10.1017/ice.2020.106
sha: 4b85e309ae218b6e103140e123a64897212b250b
doc_id: 982821
cord_uid: pvt9bswf

nan

Here, we provide reports from Thailand, a country with the second-most COVID-19 infections at one point in the worldwide outbreak timeline. 2 As of March 27, 2020, there were 1,136 patients with COVID-19 in Thailand, and 2 of these were medical personnel working in operating rooms. These cases occurred in 2 different rural hospitals. The first case was an anesthesiologist and the second case was an internist working as a surgeon. These 2 patients had regular work rotations in operating rooms during the presymptomatic COVID-19 period. Surveillance for possible transmission to patients and other personnel is presently under way.

In fact, COVID-19 has been sporadically reported in a patients receiving surgery, causing special attention to be focused on management techniques related to patients. 3, 4 However, no reports have been published on COVID-19 among members of the medical teams who practice in operating rooms. Although surgical infection studies usually focus on patients, it is important to give attention to the practitioners who work in operation room as well.

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Acknowledgments.Financial support. No financial support was provided relevant to this article.

All authors report no conflicts of interest relevant to this article.

Author for correspondence: Pathum Sookaromdee, E-mail: pathumsook@gmail.com Cite this article: Sookaromdee P and Wiwanitkit V. (2020). COVID-19 among medical personnel in the operating room. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, https:// doi.org/10.1017/ice.2020.106