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EMPHNET 6th Regional Conference 2018: "Innovative approaches: Adapting to the current EMR context" (111)
MERS-CoV Outbreak at Domat Al-Jandal Hospital

MERS-CoV Outbreak at Domat Al-Jandal Hospital

MERS-CoV Outbreak at Domat Al-Jandal Hospital

Authors of this article:

Abdullah Al-Guaimy ;   S Kamel
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    Abstract

    Corresponding Author:

    Abdullah Al-Guaimy


    Background: Saudi Arabia was first to report MERS-CoV in the middle east region in 2012. Several outbreaks had occurred since that time and still occur. In August,2017 an outbreak of MERS-CoV at Al-Jouf province in Saudi Arabia possibly linked to an index case who admitted to hospital while infectious.

    Objective: A team of Saudi field epidemiology training program was responsible to investigate the outbreak, to determine causes and to prevent recurrence.

    Methods: List of cases were obtained from hospital administration. Information was collected by interviewing infection control team, outbreak team at hospital, local MERS-CoV coordinator and by observing most relevant sections at hospital.

    Results: A total of 13 cases of MERS CoV infection were reported at Domat Al-Jandal hospital. Of these 13 cases, 8 cases were health care workers (3 physicians and 5 nurses), 3 cases were contacts cases of the index case. Most of cases acquired infection by person to person transmission at male medical ward and intensive care unit, only 3 contacts cases may get infected when they brought the primary case to hospital. Attack rate among physicians was 12% and among nurses was 9.8%. We found that late diagnosis, improper isolation of patients and non-compliance on infection control protocols are the leading causes of spread of the infection.

    Conclusions: Sorting and examining patients carefully at triage and emergency before admission to hospital, adhering to infection control protocols, applying effective isolation measures are a must in the way to stop or prevent any MERS-CoV infection at hospitals.

    iproc 2018;4(1):e10603

    doi:10.2196/10603


    Edited by Y Khader; This is a non–peer-reviewed article. submitted 29.03.18; accepted 29.03.18; published 29.03.18

    Copyright

    ©Abdullah Al-Guaimy, S Kamel. Originally published in Iproceedings (http://www.iproc.org), 29.03.2018.

    This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in Iproceedings, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.iproc.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.