Acquired infection after intubating patients with COVID-19: Datasets

Thirty-six anesthesia departments in 36 hospitals in four provinces of China where an outbreak of COVID-19 occurred were surveyed. We found that there were ten anesthesiologists (5 male and 5 female) who contracted the infection after performing intubation, as well as 4 nurses (1 male and 3 female) who contracted the infection after assisting with the intubation. This is a retrospective investigation and no intervention was applied. The numbers are presented as mean ± Standard Deviation (SD). We used Graphpad Prism (version 8.2.1 Windows version, GraphPad Software, San Diego). Fisher's exact test at a two-sided significance level of 0.05 was used to identify potential risk factor (s) for intubation providers. A P value less than 0.05 is considered statistically significant. A total of 211 anesthesiologists from four provinces were involved in the intubation of 664 patients with confirmed or potential COVID-19. Of these 644 patients, 640 cases were eventually confirmed with a diagnosis of COVID-19. Among the 211 anesthesiologists who performed intubation, 10 of them had a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 afterwards. Coughing is a risk factor for provider infection (P = 0.0001). The number of intubation attempts (within three attempts) did not increase the risk of the infection. All of the affected anesthesiologists had symptoms 2–12 days after the intubation encounter (average 6 ± 3 days). All had radiological image evidence of bilateral pneumonia and all reported relatively mild symptoms. The affected doctors were out of clinical service for 20–60 days (average 46 ± 12 days). Seven of the doctors have been discharged from the hospital, but three of them remain hospitalized. Four nurses who assisted with intubations contracted COVID-19. One of these nurses was in critical condition but was eventually discharged with a loss of 50 days of clinical service. The remaining three nurses have had mild symptoms so far, but one is still hospitalized.


a b s t r a c t
Thirty-six anesthesia departments in 36 hospitals in four provinces of China where an outbreak of COVID-19 occurred were surveyed. We found that there were ten anesthesiologists (5 male and 5 female) who contracted the infection after performing intubation, as well as 4 nurses (1 male and 3 female) who contracted the infection after assisting with the intubation. This is a retrospective investigation and no intervention was applied. The numbers are presented as mean ± Standard Deviation (SD). We used Graphpad Prism (version 8.2.1 Windows version, GraphPad Software, San Diego). Fisher's exact test at a two-sided significance level of 0.05 was used to identify potential risk factor (s) for intubation providers. A P value less than 0.05 is considered statistically significant. A total of 211 anesthesiologists from four provinces were involved in the intubation of 664 patients with confirmed or potential COVID-19. Of these 644 patients, 640 cases were eventually confirmed with a diagnosis of COVID-19. Among the 211 anesthesiologists who performed intubation, 10 of them had a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 afterwards. Coughing is a risk factor for provider infection ( P = 0.0 0 01). The number of intubation attempts (within three attempts) did not increase the risk of the infection. All of the affected anesthesiologists had symptoms 2-12 days after the intubation encounter (average 6 ± 3 days). All had radiological image evidence of bilateral pneumonia and all reported relatively mild symptoms. The affected doctors were out of clinical service for 20-60 days (average 46 ± 12 days). Seven of the doctors have been discharged from the hospital, but three of them remain hospitalized. Four nurses who assisted with intubations contracted COVID-19. One of these nurses was in critical condition but was eventually discharged with a loss of 50 days of clinical service. The remaining three nurses have had mild symptoms so far, but one is still hospitalized.
© 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license.

Specifications Table Subject
Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine Specific subject area Physician safety Type of data

Description of data collection
The electronic questionnaires ( Appendix I ) were sent to the directors of Anesthesiology departments of 36 hospitals in 4 provinces. The 36 directors of Anesthesiology departments asked the secretaries to fill in the questionnaires according to the contents of the questionnaires and the conditions of the department staff. The first questionnaire was sent out at the end of February 2020 to departmental chairs in 36 hospitals in four provinces where an outbreak of COVID-19 occurred, to identify information about intubation for COVID-19 patients in January and February 2020. Medical providers who contracted COVID-19 were also identified. After we identified the physicians who may have contracted the disease after performing intubation, a second questionnaire ( Appendix II ) was sent out to these individuals for more detailed information related to their infection and well-being for a detailed case analysis including reviewing the medical record for the intubation event. Only those with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 (positive computed tomography scan for an atypical bilateral pneumonia and positive viral test) were included.
( continued on next page ) Value of the Data • The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is very contagious and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. These data provide critical evidence regarding how many doctors were infected by COVID-19 at the time of intubation, and the risk factors for infection [1] . • These data tell us that the highest level of protection for airborne infectious disease (Class III) should be adopted by all persons involved in intubation, and that muscle relaxants should be required for intubating COVID-19 patients. The doctors who provide intubations for patients with COVID-19 can benefit from these data [1] . • These data tell us that medical providers who perform intubations for COVID-19 patients have a high risk of contracting the disease, ranging from 1.56% to 4.37%. The highest level of protection (Class III) and muscle relaxant should be used during intubation of COVID-19 patients.

Data description
The data include 1 table and 1 supplemental file containing a questionnaire relevant to the table. The questionnaire was designed by the research team ( Table 1 ).
All of the affected anesthesiologists had symptoms 2-12 days after the intubation encounter (average 6 ± 3 days). All of them were out of clinical service for 20-60 days (average 46 ± 12 days). Seven of the 10 affected anesthesiologists have been discharged from the hospital; three of them are still hospitalized. Three of the four affected nurses have been discharged, and one is still hospitalized after 50 days. The average days out of clinical service were 40 ± 11 days. Of the 14 affected providers, only 3 had used Class III precautions, 10 of them used Class I precautions, and 1 used Class II precautions.

Experimental design, materials and methods
Two electronic questionnaires were designed to investigate the risk of infection when anesthesiologists perform endotracheal intubation on COVID-19 patients. The first questionnaire was sent out at the end of February 2020 to departmental chairs in 36 hospitals in four provinces, where an outbreak of COVID-19 occurred, to identify information about intubation for COVID-19 patients from in January and February 2020. Medical providers who contracted COVID-19 were also identified. The first survey questionnaire to identify providers who were potentially infected after performing intubation. After we identified the physicians who may have contracted the disease after performing intubation, a second questionnaire (the questionnaire is provided as a supplementary file) was sent out to these individuals to obtain more detailed information related to their infection and well-being, as well as a detailed case analysis including review of the medical record for the intubation event. Only those with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 (positive computed tomography scan for an atypical bilateral pneumonia and positive viral test) were included. We also asked these physicians whether there were other persons who assisted with these intubations. Additional information about the affected persons who assisted with intubations was also obtained and analyzed. The level of protection and precaution used for infectious disease is provided as Appendix III (the questionnaire is provided as a supplementary file). The numbers are presented as mean ± Standard Deviation (SD). We used Graphpad Prism (version 8.2.1 Windows version, GraphPad Software, San Diego). Fisher's exact test at a two-sided significance level of 0.05 was used to identify potential risk factor (s) for intubation providers.

Ethics statement
This is a retrospective survey. We assure that the work described has been carried out in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association. The informed consents were obtained. The privacy rights of human subjects were always observed. The survey will not cause any harm or adverse effects for subjects.

Declaration of Competing Interest
All of the authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships which have, or could be perceived to have, influenced the work reported in this article.