Most of those infected in COVID-19 outbreak at Duke Raleigh Hospital were staff
Last month’s outbreak of COVID-19 that began in a patient ward at Duke Raleigh Hospital is blamed for a total of 31 cases, Duke University Health System said late Thursday.
Duke Health says it tracked down dozens of hospital staff, patients and visitors who might have been exposed to the coronavirus as a result of the outbreak and that the last of the test results came back this week.
Most who tested positive were Duke employees, said Leigh Bleecker, the hospital’s interim president.
“The incident serves as a reminder that COVID-19 remains a public health concern, and everyone should remain vigilant with continued mask wearing, hand washing and social distancing,” Bleecker said in a written statement. “Everyone is now eligible for vaccination, and we encourage all to get vaccinated at their first opportunity.”
Duke has declined to say how many of the infected workers had been vaccinated. Front-line health care workers have been eligible for COVID-19 vaccines since mid-December, but many have declined or put it off.
Like many hospital systems, Duke has not made vaccination mandatory. That’s in part because the vaccines are approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration on an emergency basis and haven’t gone through the customary vetting process.
The COVID-19 cases were traced to a fifth floor inpatient unit for surgical and cancer patients. The first were confirmed over the weekend of March 20 and 21. Duke had found 25 cases by the end of that week but continued contact tracing until recently.
Some of the 31 infected people uncovered by Duke’s tracing effort may have actually contracted the virus elsewhere, Bleecker said, “but we have counted them as part of the hospital incident until further review.”
The hospital said it did a “deep clean” of the fifth floor unit where the outbreak began, including the use of ultraviolet light to keep pathogens from reproducing or remaining infectious.
Duke has released no information about the health of the people infected as a result of the outbreak. Citing federal health information privacy rules, a spokeswoman declined to say if any of the 31 people had required hospitalization as a result of contracting the virus or if all of them had recovered.
