Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Dec 9;78(5):307-314.
doi: 10.1136/oemed-2020-106731. Online ahead of print.

Occupation and risk of severe COVID-19: prospective cohort study of 120 075 UK Biobank participants

Miriam Mutambudzi #  1   2 , Claire Niedwiedz #  3 , Ewan Beaton Macdonald  3 , Alastair Leyland  1 , Frances Mair  3 , Jana Anderson  3 , Carlos Celis-Morales  3   4 , John Cleland  5 , John Forbes  6 , Jason Gill  4 , Claire Hastie  3 , Frederick Ho  3 , Bhautesh Jani  3 , Daniel F Mackay  3 , Barbara Nicholl  3 , Catherine O'Donnell  3 , Naveed Sattar  4 , Paul Welsh  4 , Jill P Pell  3 , Srinivasa Vittal Katikireddi #  1 , Evangelia Demou #  7
Affiliations

Occupation and risk of severe COVID-19: prospective cohort study of 120 075 UK Biobank participants

Miriam Mutambudzi et al. Occup Environ Med. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate severe COVID-19 risk by occupational group.

Methods: Baseline UK Biobank data (2006-10) for England were linked to SARS-CoV-2 test results from Public Health England (16 March to 26 July 2020). Included participants were employed or self-employed at baseline, alive and aged <65 years in 2020. Poisson regression models were adjusted sequentially for baseline demographic, socioeconomic, work-related, health, and lifestyle-related risk factors to assess risk ratios (RRs) for testing positive in hospital or death due to COVID-19 by three occupational classification schemes (including Standard Occupation Classification (SOC) 2000).

Results: Of 120 075 participants, 271 had severe COVID-19. Relative to non-essential workers, healthcare workers (RR 7.43, 95% CI 5.52 to 10.00), social and education workers (RR 1.84, 95% CI 1.21 to 2.82) and other essential workers (RR 1.60, 95% CI 1.05 to 2.45) had a higher risk of severe COVID-19. Using more detailed groupings, medical support staff (RR 8.70, 95% CI 4.87 to 15.55), social care (RR 2.46, 95% CI 1.47 to 4.14) and transport workers (RR 2.20, 95% CI 1.21 to 4.00) had the highest risk within the broader groups. Compared with white non-essential workers, non-white non-essential workers had a higher risk (RR 3.27, 95% CI 1.90 to 5.62) and non-white essential workers had the highest risk (RR 8.34, 95% CI 5.17 to 13.47). Using SOC 2000 major groups, associate professional and technical occupations, personal service occupations and plant and machine operatives had a higher risk, compared with managers and senior officials.

Conclusions: Essential workers have a higher risk of severe COVID-19. These findings underscore the need for national and organisational policies and practices that protect and support workers with an elevated risk of severe COVID-19.

Keywords: exposure assessment; health care workers; investigation of outbreaks of illness; physicians; public health.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: JPP is a member of the UK Biobank Scientific Steering Committee.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Flow chart of cohort
Figure 2
Figure 2. Risk ratios for the associations between (a) detailed essential occupational groups, (b) SOC2000 major occupational groups and severe COVID-19
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

  • COVID-19: are not all workers 'essential'?
    De Matteis S. De Matteis S. Occup Environ Med. 2021 May;78(5):305-306. doi: 10.1136/oemed-2020-107272. Epub 2021 Apr 2. Occup Environ Med. 2021. PMID: 33811176 No abstract available.

References

    1. Armstrong J, Rudkin JK, Allen N, Crook DW, Wilson DJ, Wyllie DH, et al. Dynamic linkage of covid-19 test results between public health england’s second generation surveillance system and uk biobank. Microb Genomics. 2020 Apr;6(7):1–9. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wang D, Hu B, Hu C, Zhu F, Liu X, Zhang J, et al. Clinical Characteristics of 138 Hospitalized Patients with 2019 Novel Coronavirus-Infected Pneumonia in Wuhan, China. JAMA - J Am Med Assoc. 2020 Mar;323(11):1061–9. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Office of National Statistics. Which occupations have the highest potential exposure to the coronavirus (COVID-19)? 2020
    1. Lan F-Y, Wei C-F, Hsu Y-T, Christiani DC, Kales SN. Work-related Covid-19 transmission. medRxiv. 2020 Apr; 2020.04.08.20058297. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Office for National Statistics. Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by occupation, England and Wales: deaths registered between 9 March and 25 May 2020. 2020 May