A call to protect non-clinical frontliners in the fight against COVID-19: evidence from a seroprevalence study in the Philippines.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, healthcare workers (HCW) and other hospital personnel have been regarded as “frontliners”, and at increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to the general population. As such, testing only symptomatic individuals or regular testing of HCWs who directly attend to COVID-19 patients or specimens may underestimate the extent of infection, and actual SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence. Because of this, the World Health Organization has called for seroepidemiological surveys to assess the extent of infection amongst HCW and other populations to provide timely estimates of COVID-19 virus infection severity and inform public health responses and evidence-based policy decisions.