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Researchers from the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, Big Data Institute, Pandemic Sciences Institute at Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Medicine, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Lancaster University, Utrecht University, and the UK Health Security Agency collaborated on this study.
Hospital transmission of SARS-CoV-2 puts vulnerable people at risk, affects healthcare workers and potentially drives community transmission. However, attempts to quantify the extent of hospital transmissions and the driving factors have been lacking. Professor Ben Cooper, Professor of Epidemiology at the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health and the corresponding author on the study, and his colleagues address these knowledge gaps by assessing data from 145 English NHS acute hospital trusts, including 356 hospitals with a combined bed capacity of approximately 100,000. Data included incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection, staff absences owing to SARS-CoV-2 and classification of the likely source of infection.