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In view of the reopening of companies, appropriate risk prevention measures should be studied. Crowded offices, where people stay in contact for many hours, can become dangerous, especially for people who share the same “air flows.” In March 2020 i Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), South Korea’s national public health authority, has been informed of a group of COVID-19 cases in a call center located in a commercial-residential building in the capital of Seoul.
Complete study of an outbreak.
In an article published by KCDC (which will go to CDC USA magazine in August), the evolution of the outbreak in the call center located between floors 7 and 11 of a 19-story building that also includes apartments is shown. The alarm goes off when a COVID-19 case is diagnosed in the call center on March 8. The next day, the offices are closed and epidemiological investigations begin.
43% at the same level and on the same side
Korean authorities identify the 922 employees and 203 residents living on the top floors and 20 visitors. They made a swab to all the employees and residents of the apartments in three days. In another three days, they sent a total of 16,628 text messages to people who stayed more than 5 minutes near the building and monitored these people using tracking data on the active app in Korea. In the end, 1,143 people were evaluated and 97 positive cases of Covid-19 were identified. 94 of the 97 positives worked in the 11th floor call center, which had a total of 216 employees and therefore a prevalence rate of 43.5%, but not only: all but five were on the same side of the building in the same part of open space (as seen in the figure, ed).
Air flows and permanence.
The study concludes that SARS-CoV-2 can be exceptionally contagious in crowded settings like a call center. Outside the eleventh floor, only three other people have been infected. For the 1,145 they used the same elevators, the same public spaces. In summary, it seems that prolonged contact is needed to get infected, as demonstrated by a study carried out in the case of a restaurant in China where one person infects 9 people who were also at other tables but under the same flow of air conditioning.
April 28, 2020 (change April 28, 2020 | 2:44 pm)
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