According to the latest research published in Infectious Disease in May 2024 by Evans et al., titled ‘Impact of interventions to reduce nosocomial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in English NHS Trusts: a computational modelling study’, it is projected that around 90,000 hospital patients in England acquired SARS-CoV-2 during hospitalization prior to September 2021. Furthermore, there were suspected additional infections among healthcare workers. The focus of the study was to retrospectively examine how the implementation of interventions in hospitals impacted the spread and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 among COVID-19 diagnosed patients and healthcare workers.
An individual-based model was applied to measure the contribution and efficacy of individual and combined interventions in English hospitals during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. A panel of experts, using national/local data, relevant literature, and their collective experiences, played a crucial role in selecting the interventions and provided parameters and uncertainty variables for the model, ensuring its applicability aligns with real-world scenarios.
Through simulated scenarios, estimates of nosocomial infections without interventions were derived from data spanning March 2020 to July 2022, taking into consideration different strains of the virus and varying vaccination doses. The study highlighted that if inpatient testing, infection prevention and control measures, and reductions in occupancy and visitations were absent, the incidence of nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 infections could have doubled during the pandemic. This could have led to over 600,000 healthcare workers potentially being infected in the initial wave alone. Conversely, the implementation of intervention measures, such as symptomatic healthcare worker isolation and universal masking, showcased significant effectiveness in preventing further infections.
The research findings showed that these interventions may have collectively prevented an estimated 400,000 (between 240,000 – 500,000) inpatient infections and 410,000 (between 370,000 – 450,000) healthcare worker infections during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in England. The study underscored the importance of multi-layered interventions, demonstrating that although the effectiveness of individual interventions may differ, combined strategies made a significant difference in reducing hospital-acquired transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in English hospitals.