Incidence of outbreak-associated COVID-19 cases by industry in Ontario, Canada, 1 April 2020–31 March 2021

  1. Sarah A Buchan
  2. Peter M Smith
  3. Christine Warren
  4. Michelle Murti
  5. Cameron Mustard
  6. Jin Hee Kim
  7. Sandya Menon
  8. Kevin A Brown
  9. Trevor van Ingen
  10. Brendan T Smith

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Abstract

The objective of our study was to estimate the rate of workplace outbreak-associated cases of COVID-19 by industry in labour market participants aged 15–69 years who reported working the majority of hours outside the home in Ontario, Canada.

Methods

We conducted a population-based cross-sectional study of COVID-19 workplace outbreaks and associated cases reported in Ontario between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021. All outbreaks were manually classified into two-digit North American Industry Classification System codes. We obtained monthly denominator estimates from the Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey to estimate the incidence of outbreak-associated cases per 100 000 000 hours among individuals who reported the majority of hours were worked outside the home. We performed this analysis across industries and in three distinct time periods.

Results

Overall, 12% of cases were attributed to workplace outbreaks among working-age adults across our study period. While incidence varied across the time periods, the five industries with the highest incidence rates across our study period were agriculture, healthcare and social assistance, food manufacturing, educational services, and transportation and warehousing.

Conclusions

Certain industries have consistently increased the incidence of COVID-19 over the course of the pandemic. These results may assist in ongoing efforts to reduce transmission of COVID-19 by prioritising resources, as well as industry-specific guidance, vaccination and public health messaging.

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  1. Version published to 10.1136/oemed-2021-107879
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.30.21259770: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: The Public Health Ontario Ethics Review Board determined that this project did not require research ethics committee approval as the activities described were considered public health practice and not research.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.06.30.21259770v1 on medRxiv