Internationally renowned clinical microbiologists, infectious diseases specialists and experts from related disciplines will present their Covid-19 findings at the online Conference on Coronavirus Diseases which was organised by the European Society of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, or Semcei.
40% of Healthcare Workers who test positive for Covid-19 are asymptomatic according to a team of experts who reviewed previous studies on the prevalence of Covid-19 in Healthcare Workers and evaluated risk factors, characteristics, and clinical outcome of infection.
Meta analysis included data from 97 studies and 230,398 Healthcare Workers in 24 countries.
The results indicate that the estimated prevalence of coronavirus infection amongst Healthcare Workers was 10% for PCR and 7% for antibody testing.
Data from 15 studies showed that 40% of those who tested positive had no symptoms at the time of diagnosis. 48% of the positive cases were nurses, 25% were doctors and 23% were other Healthcare Workers.
It also found that 1 in 20 of the Healthcare Workers who were tested positive developed severe clinical complications and 1 in 200 died.
"Loss of taste and smell, fever and muscle pain were identified as the most significant symptoms associated with positive diagnosis amongst Healthcare Workers," according to Dr Taulant Muka, Author of the Study, University of Bern. "A significant proportion of Healthcare Workers who test positive for coronavirus are asymptomatic, leading to the silent transmission of the disease."