Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has spread worldwide, with considerable public health and socio-economic impacts that are seriously affecting health and safety of workers, as well as their employment stability. Italy was the first of many other western countries to implement extended containment measures. Health workers and others employed in essential sectors have continued their activity, reporting high infection rate with many fatalities. The epidemiological trend highlighted the importance of work as a substantial factor to consider both when implementing strategies aimed at containing the pandemic and shaping the lockdown mitigation strategy required for sustained economic recovery. To support the decision-making process, we have developed a strategy to predict the risk of infection by SARS-CoV-2 in the workplace based on the analysis of the working process and proximity between employees; risk of infection connected to the type of activity; involvement of third parties in the working processes and risk of social aggregation. We applied this approach to outline a risk index for each economic activity sector, with different levels of detail, also considering the impact on mobility of the working population. This method was implemented into the national epidemiological surveillance model in order to estimate the impact of re-activation of specific activities on the reproduction number. It has also been adopted by the national scientific committee set up by the Italian Government for action-oriented policy advice on the COVID-19 emergency in the post lockdown phase. This approach may play a key role for public health if associated with measures for risk mitigation in enterprises through strategies of business process re-engineering. Furthermore, it will make a contribution to reconsidering the organization of work, including also innovation and fostering the integration with the national occupational safety and health (OSH) system.
Highlights
A method to estimate the risk of infection by SARS-CoV-2 in the workplace has been developed taking into account, on one hand, the specific characteristics of production processes and the impact of work organization on the risk; on the other hand, we considered that many jobs require close contact with external subjects, which increases the likelihood of social aggregation, with consequences that may expand towards the community
To support the decision-making process, we have developed a strategy to predict the risk of infection by SARS-CoV-2 in the workplace, considering that many jobs require close contact with workmates or outside subjects, increasing the likelihood of social aggregation, with consequences that may involve the community
Reactivation of businesses after the lockdown introduced several challenges for control of the pandemic, but at the same time presented an opportunity to extend the benefits of cost-effective measures to the community at large
Summary
A method to estimate the risk of infection by SARS-CoV-2 in the workplace has been developed taking into account, on one hand, the specific characteristics of production processes and the impact of work organization on the risk; on the other hand, we considered that many jobs require close contact with external subjects (public, clients, etc.), which increases the likelihood of social aggregation, with consequences that may expand towards the community.This methodology is based on the general approach to risk analysis in the occupational safety and health (OSH) field [18]. A COVID-19 workplace risk assessment microbiologist may have a high index of exposure due to his specific activities but lower index of physical proximity to other colleagues; instead, a dancer or an actor may have little probability of encountering potential sources of infection but comes inevitably into close contact with other workers
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