Introduction:

The high transmission of COVID-19 has resulted in healthcare workers becoming infected while caring for patients and spreading the disease to other hospital patients or coworkers.

Objective:

To describe an in-hospital COVID-19 outbreak.

Methods:

A cross-sectional descriptive study conducted in March 2020 at the “General Calixto García Íñiguez” Clinical-Surgical University Hospital, Havana. The study included 545 individuals among patients and healthcare workers. The data was collected from the clinical-epidemiological profiles and the medical records. Each case was described using the following criteria: type of health worker, service provided, sex, signs, symptoms, and comorbidities. To determine the outbreak intensity, a contact matrix was created and the reproductive number and the dispersion value were calculated.

Results:

Of the 545 studied individuals, 30% were patients and 70% workers of seven services, 30 tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Outbreak control actions were aimed at identifying, reporting and isolating sick individuals. The average age was 45 years. The clinical pictures was characterized by cough, dyspnea and asthenia. The most common comorbidities (60%) were hypertension, ischemic cardiopathology, and diabetes mellitus; 53.3% were asymptomatic and three people died. The attack rate was 5.5%.

Conclusions:

During the outbreak, medical doctors and nurses were the most affected. The timeliness of outbreak control actions and the quality of the epidemiological investigation are essential to ensure effective control.

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