Occupational factors in the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: compensation claims applications support establishing an occupational surveillance system

Abstract

IntroductionThe SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is an impacting challenge for occupational health. Epidemiological surveillance of COVID-19 includes systematic tracking and reporting of the total cases and deaths, but suitable experiences of surveillance systems for identifying the occupational risk factors involved in the COVID-19 pandemic are still missing, despite the interest for occupational safety and health.MethodsA methodological approach has been implemented in Italy to estimate the occupational risk of infection, classifying each economic sector as at low, medium-low, medium-high and high risk, based on three parameters: exposure probability, proximity index and aggregation factor. Furthermore, during the epidemic emergency, the Italian Workers’ Compensation Authority introduced the notation of COVID-19 work-related infection as an occupational injury and collected compensation claims of workers from the entire national territory.ResultsAccording to compensation claims applications, COVID-19 infection in Italy has been acquired at the workplace in a substantial portion of the total cases (19.4%). The distribution of the economic sectors involved is coherent with the activities classified at risk in the lockdown period. The economic sectors mostly involved were human health and social work activities, but occupational compensation claims also include cases in meat and poultry processing plants workers, store clerks, postal workers, pharmacists and cleaning workers.ConclusionsThere is a need to go towards an occupational surveillance system for COVID-19 cases, including an individual anamnestic analysis of the circumstances in which the infection is acquired, for the prevention of occupational infectious risk, supporting insurance system effectiveness and managing vaccination policies.

Change of Willingness to Accept COVID-19 Vaccine and Reasons of Vaccine Hesitancy of Working People at Different Waves of Local Epidemic in Hong Kong, China: Repeated Cross-Sectional Surveys

“…However, there are limited studies on the vaccine acceptance among other occupations which also have a high chance of infection under the pandemic, such as retail or restaurant workers with direct exposure to customers [ 21 ]. Transmission of the disease in workplaces other than healthcare settings was substantial [ 22 , 23 ]. Therefore, it is also necessary to understand vaccination acceptance among different occupation groups.…”

COVID‐19 as an occupational disease

“…Given the importance of occupation as a COVID‐19 risk factor, responding effectively to the epidemic requires industry and occupation (I/O) data on cases and contacts. Collecting I/O and employer data can help identify and control hotspots, provide information about patterns of disease, and inform intervention efforts to blunt future waves of disease; Italy has provided an informative model for consideration 95 . Benefits may include understanding seroprevalence of antibodies against SARS‐CoV‐2 among high‐risk groups, which may be lower than anticipated 96 and thus counter overly optimistic predictions of herd immunity.…”

Occupational Exposure in the Lombardy Region (Italy) to SARS-CoV-2 Infection: Results from the MUSTANG–OCCUPATION–COVID-19 Study

“…Emerging literature is suggesting that occupational exposure to the virus might be independently associated with anti-SARS-CoV-2 positivity and emphasized the importance of further research on the infection prevalence in worker populations and main factors associated with antibody positivity [ 11 , 13 , 14 ]. Within this context, the need of a complete occupational surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 has been claimed, in order to acquire information on anamnestic analysis of the circumstances in which the infection is acquired, as well as the preventive and protection measure to be implemented in workplace [ 17 ].…”