Number infected in COVID outbreak at Duke Raleigh Hospital has reached 20
The number of COVID-19 cases that can be traced to an outbreak at Duke Raleigh Hospital is now 20, and Duke Health System says it continues to search for others.
The cases have all been traced to a fifth floor inpatient unit for surgical and cancer patients. The first was confirmed over the weekend, and Duke announced the outbreak in a statement on Monday evening.
The majority of those who have tested positive are members of the hospital staff, Duke officials said Tuesday.
Front-line health care workers have been eligible to get vaccinated against COVID-19 since mid-December, and a majority at Duke Raleigh Hospital have been, officials said.
But Duke has not made vaccination mandatory, in part because the vaccines are approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration on an emergency basis.
“Some staff members have delayed vaccination for a variety of personal reasons,” Duke officials said in response to questions from The News & Observer.
“The vaccines are highly effective in protecting people from infection, but in the event of infection, they also prevent severe COVID and death,” Duke officials said. “The benefits of the vaccine have been evident in this situation.”
Asked if that meant some of those who became infected had been vaccinated, a spokeswoman said she could not say because of federal health information privacy rules.
The patients who tested positive and still require hospitalization have been moved to a COVID unit, Duke says. The hospital says it is also doing a “deep clean” of the fifth floor unit and temporarily restricting visitors there.
Duke says it is doing contact tracing to try to identify anyone who might have been exposed to the coronavirus at the hospital. The number of people it is trying to reach “is continuing to evolve,” Duke officials said.
Local health departments are supposed to report clusters of coronavirus cases in workplace, educational and other community settings to the state Department of Health and Human Services. As of Monday, DHHS had received 77 reports of coronavirus clusters in hospitals, clinics and other health care settings statewide, resulting in 796 cases and 8 deaths.
That number may be low. SarahLewis Peel, a spokeswoman for DHHS, noted that health care facilities are not required to report clusters of coronavirus cases to their local health department, though she said DHHS was aware of the outbreak at Duke Raleigh.
This story was originally published March 23, 2021 at 3:00 PM.
