Epidemiological features of severe acute respiratory syndrome in health worker

  Objective   To descr ibe the epidemiologic features of incidence and death with severe acute respiratory syndrome(SARS)in the population of health worker in Beijing.

  Methods   All probable cases of SARS classified into the health worker were interviewed by trained investigator and followed a descriptive analysis.Special incidence rate and mortality of SARS for health worker were calculated according to the 5th national census in 2000.

  Results   Totally 407 health workers were diagnosed as probable cases of SARS, accounting for 17.3% of all cases in Beijing.T he ratio of SARS cases of male to female among health worker was 1B3.47, the incidence rate was 282.80/100 000.10 dead with a mortality and fatality of 6194/100 000 and 2.46%.Comparing with the average level of Beijing, the incidence rate, monality and fatality were 15.2 times, 4.9 times and 0.32 times, respectively.The mean age of health worker with SARS was 32.6 years(SD=9.6 years), 76.5% of SARS cases were under 40 years.At the early stage of epidemic, a high proportion of health worker was infected, taking up 23118% of all cases, the proportion decreased significantly as the epidemic course develop(χ²=23.18, P < 0.001).SARS cases with clear contact history accounted for 71.1% among health worker, much higher than that(38.5%)in other vocational population(χ²=142.3, P < 0.01).

  Conclusion   Health worker in Beijing was at the greatest risk to be infected with SARS with the epidemiological features of high incidence rate and mortality, but low fatality.Measure such as setting up destination hospital was proved to be effective to reduce the infection chance among health workders.