Only 25% COVID-19 positive health workers in Oman displayed symptoms

Only 25% COVID-19 positive health workers in Oman displayed symptoms

Muscat: Only one in four healthcare workers who tested positive for COVID-19 displayed symptoms for the virus, according to findings by Omani researcher Dr Amal Al Shibli at Sultan Qaboos University. Al Shibli and her team conducted a study on 583 healthcare workers at SQU Hospital to identify the causes behind asymptomatic infection of the disease, by collecting the social, demographic, and clinical backgrounds of those who did not display any symptoms, but still tested positive. The project was organised under the COVID-19 Research Programme of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation. Within this project, the participants were recruited from multiple areas that had different levels of exposure risk to COVID-19. The healthcare workers filled in a questionnaire which contains the demographic, clinical, and social data, and were then screened using combined nasopharyngeal and throat swabs to test them for COVID-19 using RT-PCR tests. The study showed that 4. 1 per cent of healthcare workers at the hospital had asymptomatic COVID-19. 30 per cent of those workers were involved in direct COVID-19 patient care, and only 25 per cent of the study participants showed symptoms of the disease in a two-week span after their tests were conducted. "The