Nursing Home Visitor Policy and COVID-19 Infection Rates.

IF 3.8 3区医学 Q2 INFECTIOUS DISEASES

American journal of infection control Pub Date : 2025-07-16 DOI:10.1016/j.ajic.2025.07.003

Huiwen Xu, John R Bowblis, Shuang Li, Yong-Fang Kuo, James S Goodwin

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ohio was the only state that collected facility-level visitation data after rescinding its ban on visitors. This study examines the association of allowing outside visitors with COVID-19 infection rates among nursing home residents.

Methods: We assembled a cohort of Ohio nursing homes over 9 weeks (11/1/2020 to 1/3/2021). For each week, we obtained whether a facility allowed visitors, any COVID-19 infections among residents, community infection rates, and other facility characteristics. Marginal structural models examined the association of allowing visitors with resident infections, weighted by the inverse of the probability of allowing visitors.

Results: Of the 677 nursing homes with visitation data, the number of facilities allowing visitors during any week from 10/29/2020 to 1/3/2021 ranged from 226 to 327. Marginal models substantially improved the balance in covariates. In the marginal models, allowing visitors was not associated with the unadjusted rates or adjusted odds of new infection among residents (odds ratio=0.92, 95% confidence interval: 0.78, 1.08). The result was similar in sensitivity analyses on the lagged effect of allowing visitors.

Conclusions: Allowing visitors in the context of adequate preventive measures was safe, even during a period of high community transmission and before vaccine rollouts.

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疗养院访客政策与COVID-19感染率

背景：在2019冠状病毒病大流行期间，俄亥俄州是唯一一个在取消游客禁令后收集设施级访问数据的州。本研究调查了养老院居民中允许外部访客与COVID-19感染率的关系。方法：我们在9周内（2020年11月1日至2021年1月3日）召集了俄亥俄州养老院的队列。每周，我们获得了设施是否允许访客、居民中是否有COVID-19感染、社区感染率和其他设施特征。边际结构模型检验了允许访客与居民感染的关系，通过允许访客的概率的倒数加权。结果：在677家有探访数据的养老院中，在2020年10月29日至2021年1月3日的任何一周允许探访的设施数量从226到327。边际模型极大地改善了协变量的平衡。在边际模型中，允许访客与居民中未调整的比率或调整后的新感染几率无关（优势比=0.92,95%置信区间：0.78,1.08）。在允许游客进入的滞后效应的敏感性分析中，结果与此相似。结论：在采取充分预防措施的情况下允许访客是安全的，即使在社区传播率高的时期和疫苗推广之前也是如此。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

American journal of infection control 医学-传染病学

CiteScore

7.40

自引率

4.10%

发文量

479

审稿时长

24 days

期刊介绍： AJIC covers key topics and issues in infection control and epidemiology. Infection control professionals, including physicians, nurses, and epidemiologists, rely on AJIC for peer-reviewed articles covering clinical topics as well as original research. As the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC)