Clinical Outcome and Prognosis of a Nosocomial Outbreak of COVID-19

Nosocomial coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreaks have been reported despite widespread quarantine methods to prevent COVID-19 in society and hospitals. Our study was performed to investigate the clinical outcome and prognosis of a nosocomial outbreak of COVID-19. We retrospectively analyzed the medical records of patients diagnosed with nosocomial COVID-19 of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) at a university teaching hospital between 1 November 2021 and 31 April 2022. Nosocomial COVID-19 was defined as a positive SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result 4 or more days after admission in asymptomatic patients who had a negative SARS-CoV-2 PCR test on admission. In this study, 167 patients were diagnosed with nosocomial COVID-19 (1.14%) among a total of 14,667 patients admitted to hospital during the study period. A total of 153 patients (91.6%) survived, but 14 patients (8.4%) died. The median time between admission and COVID-19 diagnosis was 11 days, and the median duration of hospital stay was 24 days. After adjusting for other factors, no vaccination (adjusted HR = 5.944, 95% CI = 1.626–21.733, p = 0.007) and chronic kidney disease (adjusted HR = 6.963, 95% CI = 1.182–41.014, p = 0.032) were found to increase mortality risk. Despite strict quarantine, a significant number of nosocomial COVID-19 cases with a relatively high mortality rate were reported. As unvaccinated status or chronic kidney disease were associated with poor outcomes of nosocomial COVID-19, more active preventive strategies and treatments for patients with these risk factors are needed.