Comparative assessment of COVID-19 incidence among healthcare workers and general population in the city of Perm

Abstract

Objective. To compare the incidence of COVID-19 among healthcare workers and the general population.
 Materials and methods. A retrospective analysis of COVID-19 incidence among healthcare workers and the general population was conducted using official statistics from the Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Perm (Russia) for the period of 2020–2022. An epidemiological descriptive and analytical method was used.
 Results. During the pre-vaccination period, the disease incidence among healthcare workers exceeded that of the general population by 3.4 times. During the mass immunization period against the background of Delta strain circulation, there was a reduction in the severity of the epidemic process in both groups, while maintaining a trend towards an illness increase. When the Omicron strain appeared, there was revealed an explosive growth in the sickness rate among both healthcare workers and the general population, which was followed by a subsequent decline. Female healthcare workers had an illness rate 1.3 times higher than males. Among the afflicted healthcare workers, those aged 36–59 constituted the largest proportion. The share of infected in the group of 18–36 years and those of 60 and above was 24.7 % and 20.0 %, respectively. A similar gender and age structure of the disease was observed in the general population. The disease rate among doctors exceeded that of nurses and other medical personnel.
 Conclusions. It has been established that the severity of COVID-19 epidemic process among healthcare workers reliably exceeds that of the entire population with the similarity of qualitative manifestations of the epidemic process.