The Characteristics of Health Care Workers with COVID-19 and Relationship Between COVID-19 Mortality and BCG/Tuberculosis History: a multi-center study

  1. Ş Torun
  2. Ş Özkaya
  3. N Şen
  4. F Kanat
  5. I Karaman
  6. Ş Yosunkaya
  7. Ö Ş Dikiş
  8. A Asan
  9. S A Eroğlu
  10. S S Atal
  11. Ö Ayten
  12. N Aksel
  13. H Ermiş
  14. N Özçelik
  15. M Demirelli
  16. İ Kara
  17. Ş Sümer
  18. K Marakoğlu
  19. F Üzer
  20. Y Uyar
  21. T Çiçek
  22. Z E Ünsal
  23. H Vatansev
  24. B B Yıldırım
  25. T Kuruoğlu
  26. A Atilla
  27. Y Ersoy
  28. B Kandemir
  29. Y Durduran
  30. F G Cihan
  31. N Demirbaş
  32. F Yıldırım
  33. M S Akcay
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Abstract

Background

Today, COVID-19 pandemic has brought countries’ health services into sharp focus. Despite the low incidence of cases(1.2%) and high mortality rate(2.4%) among Turkish population, the low mortality rate(0.3%) despite the high incidence(11.5%) declared in healthcare workers drew our group’s attention. Therefore, we aimed to report the characteristics of infected health-care workers and investigate the relationship between BCG vaccine and tuberculosis history with COVID-19 mortality in infected health-care worker population.

Method

This study was conducted in three hospitals to assess the clinical presentations, disease severity and correlation with BCG vaccine and tuberculous history in COVID-19 positive health-care workers by an online questionnaire platform. The relationship between characteristics and tuberculosis history were investigated according to hospitalization status of the patients.

Result

Total of 465 infected healthcare workers included in the study. The rate of history of direct care and contact to tuberculosis patient, presence of previous tuberculosis treatment and BCG scar, presence of radiological infiltrations was significantly higher in hospitalized healthcare workers. The ratio of direct care and direct contact to the patient with tuberculosis, and presence of family history of tuberculosis were statistically significantly higher in patients with radiological infiltrations.

Conclusion

Although COVID-19 risk and incidence are higher among healthcare workers compared to the normal population due to higher virus load, this study brings evidence for the fact that the lower mortality rate seen in infected healthcare workers might be due to healthcare workers’ frequent exposure to tuberculosis bacillus and the mortality-reducing effects of BCG vaccine, despite the higher hospitalization rate and radiological infiltrations due to over-triggered immune system.

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