Duke hospital patients, employees notified of potential exposure to coronavirus
An employee at Duke University Hospital recently tested positive for coronavirus, prompting Duke Health to notify patients and staff who might have had contact with the person, the health system said late Monday.
The employee was not the first at Duke Health to test positive for coronavirus, and the notifications were not the first the health system has made.
“If one of our health care workers tests positive for COVID-19, our employee health and infection prevention experts evaluate the circumstances of the work and clinical environment,” Duke Health said in a written statement. “Based on CDC and other expert guidance, any potentially affected patients and staff would be notified of a workplace exposure and managed appropriately, which occurred in this situation.”
The statement concludes that “at this time, there is no evidence that any patients at Duke have acquired COVID-19 from health care worker exposure.”
Duke Health did not provide any details about the infected worker or previous cases among its employees. But Dr. Thomas Owens, president of Duke University Hospital, noted that Duke is not unique in North Carolina.
“As some of the largest employers in the state, all of the largest N.C. hospital systems are seeing some employees develop COVID, just as other members of the community are experiencing,” Owens said in a written statement. “This is not surprising and is consistent with what we see annually with influenza.”
The disclosure, first reported by WRAL, is similar to one made last week by UNC Health, which acknowledged that a dozen employees at its flagship hospital in Chapel Hill were home in quarantine after testing positive for coronavirus. Spokesman Alan Wolf said other employees who tested positive earlier had completed quarantine periods and been allowed to return to work.
Wolf said there had been no evidence that an infected employee had spread the virus to others at UNC Medical Center. Patients who come in contact with a positive employee are notified, he said, and co-workers are sent home for 14 days and monitored.
Duke has a similar policy.
“If a Duke health care worker tests positive after developing any even very mild symptoms while at work, patients who had received care from that worker during the time of their potential symptoms would be notified out of an abundance of caution, with additional follow-up and monitoring being provided,” Duke Health said in a written statement.
Doctors, nurses and other health care workers are more likely to come in contact with people infected with coronavirus. More than 9,000 health care workers nationwide had contracted the virus as of April 9, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week, and 27 had died of COVID-19.
The CDC said those estimates were likely low, because a person’s occupation was reported in less than quarter of all cases.
As early as March 20, Duke Health said an employee had tested positive for COVID-19, but it did not think any patients were exposed to the virus. The employee was not at work when he or she developed symptoms and did not return to work after testing positive, Duke Health said at the time.
Last week, Duke Health said it had since had other employees who had tested positive.
This story was originally published April 20, 2020 at 9:09 PM.
