Assessment of post‐SARS‐CoV‐2 fatigue among physicians working in COVID‐designated hospitals in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Background: Fatigue has been observed after the outbreaks of several infectious diseases around the world. To explore the fatigue level among physicians working in COVID‐19‐designated hospitals in Bangladesh, a matched case‒control study was conducted on post‐SARS‐CoV‐2 fatigue. Method: In this study, 105 physicians diagnosed with COVID‐19 who were declared cured at least 6 weeks before the interview date were recruited as cases, and the same number of age‐ and designation‐matched healthy physicians were recruited as controls from the same hospital at a 1:1 ratio. Diagnosis of COVID‐19 infection was confirmed by detection of SARS CoV‐2 antigen by RT‒PCR from reference laboratories in Bangladesh or by HRCT chest. Result: Approximately two‐thirds of the physicians were male (67.6% vs. 32.4%). More than 80% of them were younger than 40 years. The cases had a significantly greater number of comorbid conditions. The fatigue severity scale (FSS) score (mean) was much higher for cases (36.7 ± 5.3 vs. 19.3 ± 3.8) than for the control group, with a statistically significant difference. Similarly, approximately 67.7% of the previously COVID‐19‐positive physicians were in the highest FSS score tertile compared to the respondents in the control group, who had a mean score of <3. Conclusion: Physicians who had a previous history of COVID‐19 infection had significantly higher total and mean FSS scores, signifying a more severe level of fatigue than physicians who had never been COVID‐19 positive while working in the same hospital irrespective of their age and sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]