Bern Center for Precision Medicine (BCPM)

How to protect healthcare workforce during pandemics: Determining the consequences of testing asymptomatic co-workers after the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak

Principal Investigator:
Prof. Dr. med. Guido Beldi, Department for Visceral Surgery and Medicine, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital and Visceral and Transplantation Surgery Research Group, Department for Biomedical Research, University of Bern. For more information, please visit the website.

Co-Investigator:
Dr. Daniel Sánchez-Taltavull, Department for Visceral Surgery and Medicine, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital and Visceral and Transplantation Surgery Research Group, Department for Biomedical Research, University of Bern.

Representative image: The project aims to determine infection dynamics at the workplace between susceptible (S), latent (L), infected (I) and recovered (R) healthcare workers

During pandemics, protecting caregivers is a crucial task. The project is designed to identify if continuous testing of asymptomatic healthcare workers allows detection of the onset of a second wave of COVID-19. In the context of a clinical study, asymptomatic healthcare workers of two departments of the Inselspital are already now continuously tested for SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 outbreak. The goal of the study is to determine the effect of testing of asymptomatic caregivers on the protection of healthcare workforce and patients in each stage of a pandemic.