Daily COVID-19 employee attestations at a large quaternary hospital in Melbourne, Australia – Limitations and lessons learnt

Background

As one of the many measures to limit the potentially infectious persons entering healthcare settings, the Victorian Department of Health (DH) introduced a daily attestation between 2020 and 2022. Upon entry to a health service, employees were required to confirm they were free from symptoms related to COVID-19 and did not have contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case in the previous 7–14 days.

Methods

We performed a retrospective analysis of employee attestations and SARS-CoV-2 tests performed between 1/6/2021 and 14/2/2022 at the main campus of the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Results

We found the proportion of SARS-CoV-2 positive employees identified through workplace attestation was low (1.3%). Most SARS-CoV-2 positive employees analysed in this study (94%) were asymptomatic.

Discussion

Although the proportion of SARS-CoV-2 positive employees identified was low, attestations may have deterred unwell employees from presenting to work. Proactively monitoring employee attestations, such as measuring and reporting the number of symptomatic attestations, may make this a more useful tool.