Impact of essential workers in the context of social distancing for epidemic control.

ABSTRACT: New emerging infectious diseases are identified every year, a subset of which become global pandemics like COVID-19. In the case of COVID-19, many governments have responded to the ongoing pandemic by imposing social policies that restrict contacts outside of the home, resulting in a large fraction of the workforce either working from home or not working. To ensure essential services, however, a substantial number of workers are not subject to these limitations, and maintain many of their pre-intervention contacts. To explore how contacts among such "essential" workers, and between essential workers and the rest of the population, impact disease risk and the effectiveness of pandemic control, we evaluated several mathematical models of essential worker contacts within a standard epidemiolo

SUBMITTER: Milligan WR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8336873 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature