Occupational risk of COVID-19 related hospital admission in Denmark 2020–2021: a follow-up study

Abstract

Numerous occupations within and outside healthcare are associated with substantially elevated risk of COVID-19 related hospital admission while a few occupations may be protective. Reinforcement of preventive actions at workplaces is strongly warranted and should be urgently implemented to improve occupational safety during future waves of COVID-19 and new pandemics.

Occupational risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection: a nationwide register-based study of the Danish workforce during the Covid-19 pandemic 2020-21

“…Additional information on vital data, SARS-CoV-2 tests, and Covid-19 vaccinations were provided by Statistics Denmark and the National Board of Health Data from baseline week 8, 2020 until end of follow-up week 50, 2021. Details on the cohort and its key variables have been published in a previous paper 8 .…”

“…By late spring 2021, the number of tests peaked at 0.8 million/week among 2.4 million employees (own data). While the cumulative incidence for Covid-19 related hospital admission in the workforce during the first almost two years of the pandemic in Denmark was 0.17% 8 , the corresponding rate of at least one positive PCR test was 10.7% (own data).…”

“…We have recently reported increased occupational risk of severe Covid-19 in terms of Covid-19 related hospital admission among workers in the healthcare, social care, and transportation sectors 8 . Based on the same cohort and time period, in this paper, we unravel the risk of asymptomatic and less severe Covid-19 using real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test as the outcome.…”

“…Other risk factors such as mode of transportation when commuting to work might also be of importance. Previously identified at-risk occupations include health care workers, teachers, bus and taxi drivers, meat packers, retail sale workers, bartenders, and police officers 1-4 8 . The majority of studies have investigated risk across occupations using relatively rare outcomes such as Covid-19 related admission to hospital 9-11 or mortality 4 9 10 12-16 .…”

COVID-19-related hospital admission in spouses of partners in at-risk occupations

“…SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2) infection has been recognized as an occupational hazard during the pandemic, and increased risk of COVID-19 has been reported in a number of occupations in several countries including Denmark (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8). Besides the individual worker, family members may also become infected following secondary transmission of infection acquired in the workplace.…”