Q-DEPICT: Qatar Determining Emergency Physician Incidence of COVID-Positive Testing

Despite protective measures such as personal protective equipment (PPE) and a COVID airway management program (CAMP), some emergency physicians will inevitably test positive for COVID. We aim to develop a model predicting weekly numbers of emergency physician COVID converters to aid operations planning. The data were obtained from the electronic medical record (EMR) used throughout the national healthcare system. Hamad Medical Corporation's internal emergency medicine workforce data were used as a source of information on emergency physician COVID conversion and numbers of emergency physicians completing CAMP training. The study period included the spring and summer months of 2020 and started on March 7 and ran for 21 whole weeks through July 31. Data were extracted from the system's EMR database into a spreadsheet (Excel, Microsoft, Redmond, USA). The statistical software used for all analyses and plots was Stata (version 16.1 MP, StataCorp, College Station, USA). All data definitions were made a priori. A total of 35 of 250 emergency physicians (14.0%, 95% CI 9.9%-19.9%) converted to a positive real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) during the study's 21-week period. Of these. only two were hospitalized for having respiratory-only disease, and none required respiratory support. Both were discharged within a week of admission. The weekly number of newly COVID-positive emergency physicians was zero and was seen in eight of 21 (38.1%) weeks. The peak weekly counts of six emergency physicians with new COVID-positive were seen in week 14. The mean weekly number of newly COVID-positive emergency physicians was 1.7 ± 1.9, and the median was 1 (IQR, 0 to 3). This study demonstrates that in the State of Qatar's Emergency Department (ED) system, knowing only four parameters allows the reliable prediction of the number of emergency physicians likely to convert COVID PCR tests within the next week. The results also suggest that attention to the details of minimizing endotracheal intubation (ETI) risk can eliminate the expected finding of the association between ETI numbers and emergency physician COVID numbers.