11% of early COVID-19 was acquired in-hospital, study says

More than 1 in 10 COVID-19 patients from 314 UK hospitals acquired their infection from the hospital early in the pandemic, according to a research letter in The Lancet. 'There are likely to be a number of reasons why many patients were infected in these care settings,' said study author Chris A. Green, MBBS, DPhil, in a Lancaster University press release. 'These include the large numbers of patients admitted to hospitals with limited facilities for case isolation, limited access to rapid and reliable diagnostic testing in the early stages of the outbreak, the challenges around access to and best use of [personal protective equipment], our understanding of when patients are most infectious in their illness, some misclassification of cases due to presentation with atypical symptoms, and an under-appreciation of the role of airborne transmission.'