COVID-19 outbreak in a nursing home in the El Banco–Magdalena municipality, March 2021

Abstract

Introduction: On March 21, it was received a notification of the mortality of an older adult from a nursing home, who had been diagnosed with COVID- 19, through an antigen test. With this information, the municipality's Immediate Response Team (ERI) was activated, which established the first actions, among which were: assessment and testing of older adults and home caregivers, Field Epidemiological Investigation (IEC) to identify from the index case, factors related to the development of the outbreak; taking containment measures in accordance with the evidenced findings.

Materials y methods: To address the situation, the guidelines for conglomerate intervention of the National Institute of Health (INS) were taken into account. For the consolidation and processing of the information, the Excel® tool was used. Absolute and relative frequencies, the distribution of cases according to selected variables, the proportion of hospitalized positive patients, the attack rate and the fatality rate were calculated.

Results: The population at risk within the institution was a total of 44. Of these, 27 were positive for COVID-19, 12 patients (44,4 %) were hospitalized and 7 died, for a lethality of 25,9 %. The attack rate was 61,4 %. The established source (primary case): was the possible contagion of a patient hospitalized from March 1 to 4, 2021, in a second-level institution in the municipality.

Conclusions: it was concluded that, although it was not possible to take a post-mortem laboratory sample from the primary case, the dates of onset of symptoms, hospitalization and death, as well as the proposed timeline, validate the theory of contagion in the Nursing Home after of the hospitalization of the hospitalized patient, which was reinforced by the cross contamination that occurred within the institution, based on findings at the time of characterizing the outbreak.