COVID-19 in medical personnel: observation from Thailand.

Sir,

COVID-19 is a new emerging coronavirus infection that has spread to several countries [1]. Thailand is a country in Indochina that has experienced many imported cases of this new disease [2]. An important consideration is nosocomial infection with this disease. Healthcare workers (HCWs) are at particular risk of infection during the current epidemic. Here we describe our experience of COVID-19 amongst HCWs in Thailand.

At the time of writing (21st February 2020), there were 35 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Thailand, including one HCW. The HCW is a nurse attendant and became infected during routine medical work in a Thai hospital. The HCW had contact with a patient with COVID-19 who had been diagnosed with dengue at the time. As dengue is not a respiratory infection, no respiratory infection control measures were in place for this patient. However, the hospitalized patient with dengue later received an additional diagnosis of COVID-19.

This experience shows that respiratory infection control has to be considered for any patient with a possible infection, regardless of whether or not they have overt respiratory symptoms. Indeed, it is now known that some patients with COVID-19 do not have fever or respiratory symptoms at the time of presentation [3]. COVID-19 can be easily missed in tropical countries, either because it occurs in conjunction with a common infectious disease (such as dengue), or because COVID-19 infection is misdiagnosed as another more common infection.

Conflict of interest statement

None declared.

Funding sources

None.