Clinical and epidemiological profile of COVID-19 in health professionals: a review of the literature

Occupational exposure is an important source of coronavirus transmission among health professionals. The objective of this study is to review the literature on the clinical and epidemiological profile of health professionals infected by COVID-19. An integrative review was conducted based on searches of the LILACS, Medline, and PubMed databases using the following terms: medical workers, healthcare workers, healthcare personnel, and healthcare professionals combined with COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, 2019-nCoV, n-CoV, and coronavirus, with the Boolean operators “AND” and “OR”. A total of 710 publications were identified, 18 of which were selected for the review, totaling 2,208 infected health professionals in eight countries. It was observed that 67.4% (n = 1,489) of these professionals were women, and 39.4% of the population described in the 15 studies that provided information on occupation (n = 811) were nurses. Seven publications (n = 553) reported severity, among which the most prevalent category was mild/common (47.3% of cases; n = 213). The most common comorbidities were migraine (9.6%, n = 87 of 906), systemic arterial hypertension (5.5%, n = 78 of 1,427), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (3.7%, n = 52 of 1,399). The most common symptoms were coughing (34.3%, n = 597 of 1,740), headache (36.8%, n = 582 of 1,583), and myalgia (31.6%, n = 544 of 1,720). The most frequent radiological findings were bilateral involvement (34.5%, n = 139 of 403), ground glass (49%, n = 101 of 206), and bilateral pneumonia (77.4%, n = 65 of 84). The study found that the most often affected health professionals were female nursing professionals, the main symptom was coughing, and the most frequent comorbidity was migraine. The study’s limitation is the small sample. There is a need for more studies with these professionals.