COVID-19 Workplace Outbreaks by Industry Sector and Their Associated Household Transmission, Ontario, Canada, January to June, 2020

  1. Michelle Murti
  2. Camille Achonu
  3. Brendan T. Smith
  4. Kevin A. Brown
  5. Jin Hee Kim
  6. James Johnson
  7. Saranyah Ravindran
  8. Sarah A. Buchan

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Abstract

To analyze workplace outbreaks by industry sector in the first wave of the pandemic, and associated household cases.

Methods:

Number, size, and duration of outbreaks were described by sector, and outbreak cases were compared to sporadic cases in the same time frame. Address matching identified household cases with onset ≥2 days before, ≥2 days after, or within 1 day of the workplace outbreak case.

Results:

There were 199 outbreaks with 1245 cases, and 68% of outbreaks and 80% of cases belonged to (1) Manufacturing, (2) Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, Hunting, (3) Transportation and Warehousing. There were 608 household cases associated with 339 (31%) outbreak cases, increasing the burden of illness by 56%.

Conclusions:

Workplace outbreaks primarily occurred in three sectors. Prevention measures should target industry sectors at risk to prevent spread in and out of the workplace.

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  1. Version published to 10.1097/jom.0000000000002201
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.25.20239038: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: This analysis was approved by the Public Health Ontario Research Ethics Board (2028-020.01).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All descriptive and statistical analyses were conducted in SAS version 9.3(SAS Institute, Cary, NC).
    SAS Institute
    suggested: (Statistical Analysis System, RRID:SCR_008567)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.25.20239038v1 on medRxiv