Combined Infection Control Interventions Protect the Essential Workforce from Occupationally-Acquired SARS-CoV-2 during Produce Production, Harvesting and Processing Activities
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Essential food workers experience an elevated risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection due to prolonged occupational exposures (e.g., frequent close contact, enclosed spaces) in food production and processing areas, shared transportation (car or bus), and employer-provided shared housing. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of combined food industry interventions and vaccination on reducing the daily cumulative risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection for produce workers. Six linked quantitative microbial risk assessment models were developed in R to simulate daily scenarios experienced by a worker. Standard industry interventions (2 m physical distancing, handwashing, surface disinfection, universal masking, increased ventilation) and two-dose mRNA vaccinations (86–99% efficacy) were modeled individually and jointly to assess risk reductions. The infection risk for an indoor (0.802, 95% Uncertainty Interval [UI]: 0.472–0.984) and outdoor (0.483, 95% UI: 0.255–0.821) worker was reduced to 0.018 (93% reduction) and 0.060 (87.5% reduction) after implementation of combined industry interventions. Upon integration of these interventions with vaccination, the infection risk for indoor (0.001, 95% UI: 0.0001–0.005) and outdoor (0.004, 95% UI: 0.001–0.016) workers was reduced by ≥99.1%. Food workers face considerable risk of occupationally-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infection without interventions; however, consistent implementation of key infection control measures paired with vaccination effectively mitigates these risks.
Synopsis
Bundled interventions, particularly if they include vaccination, produce significant reductions (>99%) in SARS-CoV-2 infection risk for essential food workers.
Graphical Abstract
Article activity feed
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2022.04.06.22273125: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources For each modeled scenario, we incorporated specific dimensions, ventilation rates, fomite surface materials, and viral decay rates as described below. 2.4 SARS-CoV-2 Risk Characterization: The models were constructed in R (version 4.0.3; R Development Core Team; Vienna, Austria) with 10,000 iterations, using literature-derived specified parameters and probability distributions. R Development Coresuggested: (R Project for Statistical Computing, RRID:SCR_001905)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following …SciScore for 10.1101/2022.04.06.22273125: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources For each modeled scenario, we incorporated specific dimensions, ventilation rates, fomite surface materials, and viral decay rates as described below. 2.4 SARS-CoV-2 Risk Characterization: The models were constructed in R (version 4.0.3; R Development Core Team; Vienna, Austria) with 10,000 iterations, using literature-derived specified parameters and probability distributions. R Development Coresuggested: (R Project for Statistical Computing, RRID:SCR_001905)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:An important limitation to this intervention has been noted by Lee et al.73, who found that even at high ventilation rates of 20 h-1, this intervention could not overcome the high infection risk associated with an infected and susceptible worker sustaining contact in small, enclosed office spaces (20 m3). This suggests that larger facilities, like the indoor packing facility modeled here (460 m3), would likely see a greater reduction in SARS-CoV-2 infection risk upon increasing their ventilation rate, when compared to a smaller facility or office spaces. Consistent with numerous laboratory76–78 and empirical27,79 studies testing reduction in risk associated with wearing face masks, our findings for individual indoor and outdoor scenarios, along with the cumulative daily risk, demonstrate that masks are an effective tool for reducing SARS-CoV-2 infection risk. Of the masks described above, double masking (surgical mask followed by cloth mask) provided the greatest reduction in daily risk, followed by one surgical and cloth mask, respectively. Given the increased transmissibility of newer SARS-CoV-2 variants (Delta: B.1.617.280; Omicron: B.1.1.15981), the CDC has recently revised masking recommendations and has transitioned from promoting double masking82 to now promoting N95 and KN95 respirators83, while surgical masks continue to be recommended for industry by OSHA84. After incorporating the universal usage of optimally-fit N95 respirators77 throughout our model (data not sho...
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.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
-
