487 - Patient Outcomes of Contact Tracing for COVID-19 in a Pediatric Hospital

Background: Contact tracing is a critical component in controlling the spread of infectious diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the demands for contract tracing far exceeded the resources available to infection prevention and control (IPC) programs. Leveraging our Poison Control Center, our organization established a Contact Tracing Center (CTC) with content expertise and oversight by IPC and Occupational Health. The CTC identifies exposed patients and employees, provides testing guidance and scheduling, and offers post-exposure recommendations for employees. We describe patient outcomes due to employee exposures in a pediatric healthcare system.

Methods: Exposure data about employee to patient exposures (EPE) were captured real-time by scripted telephone interviews by our CTC. Chart review was performed to determine outcomes of exposed patients. A concerning exposure from a direct patient care provider to a patient was defined as unprotected contact at less than 6 feet for greater than 5 minutes in the 24 hours prior to developing symptoms. Data were analyzed to determine COVID-19 conversion rates for children exposed to pre-symptomatic and  symptomatic employees based upon exposure risk stratification, window of exposure, and employees who worked with symptoms.

Results: From March 2020 – present, we identified 38 EPE that involved 10 employees; 26 EPE were pre-symptomatic and 12 EPE symptomatic exposures. The average number of EPE per employee was 3.8 (SD 3.01). There were no secondary transmission events to patients from either pre-symptomatic or symptomatic employees.  After instituting universal masking, the number of concerning exposures to patients were 3 compared to 35 prior to universal masking.

Conclusion: We describe the experience of a novel Contact Tracing Center, leveraging alternate staffing pools to track EPE resulting in no secondary transmission to patients either before or after universal masking. We credit sick policy adherence, high hand hygiene compliance, use of standard precautions, universal masking, robust contact tracing operations and a strong data collection system to identify process gaps.