• Swetha Tatineni, Nicola M Orlov, Joseph M Riehm, Amarachi Erondu, Christine L Mozer, David J Cook, Maxx Byron, Lisa Mordell, Michael Dimitrov, and Vineet M Arora.
• Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
• J Hosp Med. 2021 Aug 18.

AbstractDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals published physical-distancing guidance and created dedicated respiratory isolation units (RIUs) for patients with COVID-19. The degree to which such distancing occurred between clinicians and patients is unknown. In this study, heat sensors from an existing hospital hand-hygiene monitoring system objectively tracked room entries as a proxy for physical distancing in both RIUs and general medicine units before and during the pandemic. The RIUs saw a 60.6% reduction in entries per room per day (from 85.7 to 33.8). General medicine units that cared for patients under investigation for COVID-19 and other patients experienced a 14.7% reduction in entries per room per day (from 76.9 to 65.1). While gradual extinction was observed in both units as COVID-19 cases declined, the RIUs had a higher degree of physical distancing. Although the optimal level of physical distancing is unknown, sustaining physical distancing in the hospital may require re-education and real-time monitoring.

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