Lamers SL, Nolan DJ, LaFleur TM, Lain BN, Moot SR, Huston CR, Neilsen CD, Feehan AK, Miele L, Rose R
Abstract
Background: Industrial hygienists (IH) in the oil and gas business instituted an extraordinary number of safety protocols to limit spread of SARS-CoV-2 onto offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. We used geno-mic surveillance to provide actionable information concerning the efficacy of their efforts.Methods: Over 6 months, employees at a single company were serology and PCR tested during a 1-5 day pre -deployment quarantine and when postdeployment symptoms were reported. From each positive test (n = 49), SARS-CoV-2 genomes were sequenced. Phylogenetic analysis was used to investigate the epidemiol-ogy of transmissions.Results: Genomic surveillance confirmed 2 viral strains were infecting 18 offshore workers. Genomic data combined with epidemiological data suggested that a change in quarantine protocols contributed to these outbreaks. A pre-deployment outbreak involved a WHO variant of interest (Theta) that had infected 4 inter-national workers. Two additional predeployment clusters of infections were identified. Conclusions: Our findings support that IH quarantine/testing protocols limited viral transmissions, halted offshore outbreaks, and stopped the spread of a variant of interest. The study demonstrates how genomic data can be used to understand viral transmission dynamics in employee populations and evaluate safety protocols in the offshore oil and gas industry.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
