Aim: To assess the measures applied to reduce the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and the timing of their application in medical oncology departments. Materials & methods: We surveyed all medical oncology departments from the Italian Emilia Romagna region via a multidomain questionnaire. The questions covered items on patients, healthcare workers, risk reduction measure and clinical trials. Results: A total of 12 centers involving 861 healthcare members joined the survey. The measures applied to patients and health workers partially converged in all the departments while major divergences were found in the clinical trials domain. High rate of COVID-19 infection occurred among medical doctors (21/208, 10.1%) and social care workers (13/110, 11.8%). Rate of infection among nurses was 5.7% (24/418). Conclusion: All measures able to reduce risk of COVID-19 infection must be applied in medical oncology departments. Early introduction of risk reduction measures may be a critical issue.

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Papers of special note have been highlighted as: • of interest; •• of considerable interest

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Vol. 16, No. 20

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History

Received 16 April 2020

Accepted 29 April 2020

Published online 21 May 2020

Published in print July 2020

Information

Keywords

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank A Paccapelo, for the statistical support and S Bartolini for data management.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

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