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. 2020 Dec:86:15-22.
doi: 10.1016/j.clinbiochem.2020.09.003. Epub 2020 Sep 12.

Staff rostering, split team arrangement, social distancing (physical distancing) and use of personal protective equipment to minimize risk of workplace transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic: A simulation study

Chun Yee Lim  1 , Mary Kathryn Bohn  2 , Giuseppe Lippi  3 , Maurizio Ferrari  4 , Tze Ping Loh  5 , Kwok-Yung Yuen  6 , Khosrow Adeli  7 , Andrea Rita Horvath  8 ; IFCC Task Force on COVID-19
Affiliations

Staff rostering, split team arrangement, social distancing (physical distancing) and use of personal protective equipment to minimize risk of workplace transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic: A simulation study

Chun Yee Lim et al. Clin Biochem. 2020 Dec.

Abstract

Background: The recent global survey promoted by the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) Taskforce on COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) described staff rostering and organization as significant operational challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Method: A discrete event simulation was used to explore the impact of different permutations of staff roster, including the number of shifts per day, the number of staff on duty per shift, overall number of staff accessible to work in the laboratory (i.e. overall staff pool), the frequency of shift changes (i.e. number of consecutive days worked), fixed work-rest days and split team arrangement on workplace transmission of COVID-19 by a simulated index staff who acquired the infection from the community over 21 days. Additionally, the impact of workplace social distancing (physical distancing) and use of personal protective equipment (PPE) were investigated.

Results: A higher rate of transmission was associated with smaller overall staff pool (expressed as multiples of the number of staff per shift), higher number of shifts per day, higher number of staff per shift, and longer consecutive days worked. Having fixed work-rest arrangement did not significantly reduce the transmission rate unless the workplace outbreak was prolonged. Social distancing and PPE use significantly reduced the transmission rate.

Conclusion: Laboratories should consider organizing the staff into smaller teams/shift and reduce the number of consecutive days worked. Additionally, our observation aligns with the IFCC biosafety recommendation of monitoring staff health (to detect early infection), split team arrangement, workplace social distancing and use of PPE.

Keywords: Biosafety; COVID-19; Laboratory management; Nosocomial infection; Social distancing; Staff roster.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Visual representation of the simulation model. Panel a shows the two states a simulated staff can be in, namely staying at home or working in the laboratory with 4 colleagues (5-staff shift). Panel b shows the Poisson distribution from which the susceptible colleagues are drawn from.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Panels a, b and c show impact of different roster arrangements (number of shifts, number of staff per shift, total staff pool) on the proportion of staff infected by workplace transmission. The secondary attack rate is set at 15% with the stimulated staff working non-consecutive days. Panel d shows the effect of different secondary attack rates on proportion of staff infected.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Effect of number of staff per shift and of the number of shifts per day on the proportion of staff infected by workplace transmission. The secondary attack rate is set at 15% with the stimulated staff working non-consecutive days.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Effect of frequency of shift change (i.e. number of consecutive days worked) on the proportion of staff infected by workplace transmission. The secondary attack rate is set at 15% with 20 staff per shift.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Effect of a) split team arrangement, social distancing and b) personal protective equipment on the proportion of staff infected by workplace transmission. The data represents the impact of the individual interventions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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