COVID-19 infection among bartenders and waiters before and after pub lockdown
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Abstract
To assess how different bans on serving alcohol in Norwegian bars and restaurants were related to the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in bartenders and waiters and in persons in any occupation.
Methods
In 25 392 bartenders and waiters and 1 496 328 persons with other occupations (mean (SD) age 42.0 (12.9) years and 51.8% men), we examined the weekly rates of workers tested and detected with SARS-CoV-2, 1–10 weeks before and 1–5 weeks after implementation of different degrees of bans on serving alcohol in pubs and restaurants, across 102 Norwegian municipalities with: (1) full blanket ban, (2) partial ban with hourly restrictions (eg, from 22:00 hours) or (3) no ban, adjusted for age, sex, testing behaviour and population size.
Results
By 4 weeks after the implementation of ban, COVID-19 infection among bartenders and waiters had been reduced by 60% (from 2.8 (95% CI 2.0 to 3.6) to 1.1 (95% CI 0.5 to 1.6) per 1000) in municipalities introducing full ban, and by almost 50% (from 2.5 (95% CI 1.5 to 3.5) to 1.3 (95% CI 0.4 to 2.2) per 1000) in municipalities introducing partial ban. A similar reduction within 4 weeks was also observed for workers in all occupations, both in municipalities with full (from 1.3 (95% CI 1.3 to 1.4) to 0.9 (95% CI 0.9 to 1.0)) and partial bans (from 1.2 (95% CI 1.1 to 1.3) to 0.5 (95% CI 0.5 to 0.6)).
Conclusion
Partial bans on serving alcohol in bars and restaurants may be similarly associated with declines in confirmed COVID-19 infection as full bans.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.01.21250905: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Institutional board review was conducted, and the Ethics Committee of South-East Norway confirmed (June 4th 2020, #153204) that external ethical board review was not required. Randomization For these municipalities, we randomly assigned hypothetical implementation weeks to enable them to serve as comparison group (see E-Table 1). Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources The statistical software used was STATA MP v.16. STATAsuggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.01.21250905: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: Institutional board review was conducted, and the Ethics Committee of South-East Norway confirmed (June 4th 2020, #153204) that external ethical board review was not required. Randomization For these municipalities, we randomly assigned hypothetical implementation weeks to enable them to serve as comparison group (see E-Table 1). Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources The statistical software used was STATA MP v.16. STATAsuggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Along this line, some important limitations should be mentioned. First, we could not rule out that infection rates might have declined regardless of the imposed restrictions. While this decline might in theory be related to the restrictions in serving of alcohol, it may also be a sign that the restriction was implemented when the local infection rate was peaking. As an example, although the analysis shows that a partial ban may be similarly associated with declining infection rates as a full ban, infection rates were higher in areas imposing a full ban on serving alcohol, and we cannot say whether implementing a partial ban in these areas would have had the same effect. Fully randomized designs would be required to exclude this potential bias. Second, restrictions on alcohol serving were rarely or never imposed alone. As an example, in the same week as the nationwide restrictions on alcohol were imposed (week 45), the government also encouraged people to limit social contact and avoid unnecessary domestic travels. In the following week, a constrain of maximum 50 persons in indoor events without fixed seating and 200 with fixed seating, was effectuated [6]. It is likely that also the municipalities with partial vs. full bans implemented such co-measures, whereas the municipalities with a hypothetical implementation week did not. Although the larger decline for bartenders and waiters than for other occupations links our findings to bars and restaurants, there is no way to ensur...
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.
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