Protocolo preliminar de vigilancia epidemiológica ocupacional de Covid-19 y Covid prolongado en trabajadores de salud de primera línea de atención
Thesis
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) became known globally with the first cases of a new viral respiratory infection officially reported by China on December 31, 2019, caused by a virus later identified as SARS-CoV-2. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020 and a pandemic on March 11, 2020 (1). The first case of COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean was in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on February 26, 2020, and in Colombia on March 6 of that same year (2,3,3). Regarding the figures of the pandemic in the country, as of September 13, 2022, 6,304,317 cases and 141,708 deaths had been reported, 3,632 active cases and 6,131,248 recovered cases (4.5). Since the start of the pandemic, it has been shown that one of the groups most at risk is health workers, who care for patients with COVID-19, front-line personnel, as reported by Nguyen et al. . in a cohort study conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom with 2,035,395 individuals from the community and 99,795 frontline health workers (TSLF). Research showing that the TSLF group is at higher risk of having a positive COVID-19 test compared to community members (adjusted HR 11.61 95% CI 10.96-12.33), which shows the importance of protecting this group with personal protection elements (PPE), and additional strategies (6), including an effective public health surveillance system. In relation to TSLF in Colombia, the impact of the pandemic on this group of great importance for its control and mitigation of its effects can be established by the statistics of the Ministry of Health and the National Institute of Health (INS). Colombia in 2020 had 122,800 doctors, 87,000 generals and 28,900 specialists, in addition to an important group of other professionals, of whom the Ministry of Health recognized with economic bonuses the work of 203,000 health workers in the pandemic, to who as of December had delivered 69 million units of protection elements (7). Since the start of the pandemic, as of November 8, there have been 81,897 cases with 355 deaths, 74.2% female, as reported by INS bulletin 153 (8). The first death of a TSLF by COVID-19 occurred on April 11, 2020, a month after the first case in the country was reported, it was a 33-year-old hospital doctor in Bogotá (9), followed by multiple deaths in the following months, especially before the start of vaccination against COVID-19, most of the cases associated with the provision of the service (8).
