An Ecological Study of COVID-19 Infection Rates within the UK Food and Drink Processing Industry.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Food processing facilities represent critical infrastructure that have stayed open during much of the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the burden of COVID-19 in this sector is thus important to help reduce the potential for workplace infection in future outbreaks.

Methods

We undertook a workplace survey in the UK food and drink processing sector and collected information on workplace size, characteristics (e.g. temperature, ventilation), and experience with COVID-19 (e.g. numbers of positive cases). For each site, we calculated COVID-19 case rates per month per 1000 workers. We performed an ecological analysis using negative binomial regression to assess the association between COVID-19 rates and workplace and local risk factors.

Results

Respondents from 33

SUBMITTER: Mueller W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9214181 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature