Abstract
Prior to widespread COVID-19 vaccination, nursing homes were required to perform comprehensive weekly testing of staff. After the vaccine became available, testing became symptom-based for vaccinated staff despite continued waves of different severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants. Nursing homes need pragmatic, affordable strategies to identify SARS-CoV-2–positive staff because financial and job-related pressures drive reluctance to disclose mild symptoms. We sought to determine whether positive environmental samples for SARS-CoV-2 could serve as trigger for comprehensive staff testing in lieu of weekly testing of all staff.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1017/ice.2022.303
Funding Information
This work was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (grant no. 75D30121C10376 to Huang).
Repository Citation
Gussin, Gabrielle M.; Singh, Raveena D.; Ibraim, Izabela Coimbra; Saavedra, Raheeb; Tjoa, Thomas T.; Curtis, Micaila; Nguyen, Kristine P.; Messaoudi, Ilhem; and Huang, Susan S., "Can testing the environment for severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) be a signal for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases among nursing home staff?" (2023). Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics Faculty Publications. 169.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/microbio_facpub/169
Notes/Citation Information
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.