The Ministry of Health has published data on cases of COVID-19 detected via company testing, revealing that the highest numbers of infections are reported in the engineering and administration sectors. Risk of workplace infection is also high for firefighters and emergency services, police officers, teachers, soldiers, and social workers. Photo Credit: Freepik / Illustrative Photo.
Czech Rep., Mar 26 (BD) – The Ministry of Health has recently published data on cases of COVID-19 detected via company testing, revealing that the highest numbers of infections are reported in the engineering and administration sectors, excluding the medical professions. Risk of workplace infection is also high for firefighters and emergency services, police officers, teachers, soldiers, and social workers. There were also many positive cases detected among warehouse staff and employees of logistics businesses.
The graph below shows the Ministry’s data for individual sectors for the entire period of the pandemic converted to 1,000 employees.
Graph: Total cumulative number of positive tests per 1000 employees. Credit: Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic (ÚZIS ČR).
The ministry has accumulated data on the number of people infected in the whole pandemic to March 14th, by individual profession.. Every third firefighter or rescuer has tested positive, a similar figure as for educators and police officers. However, the possibility of getting infected at the workplace decreased from 65% to 57% from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021. On the other hand, as Seznam Zpravy notes, the data can be misleading due to the reluctance of people to report their contacts at work and elsewhere.
According to reports made to hygiene centers, the proportion of people who have got infected at home has risen. Compared to Autumn 2020, up to 35% of those infected now report that they could have been infected at home. Infections from COVID-19 outdoors are also growing, which the Ministry describes as community spread of the disease. The virus is also detected in large numbers in those groups who do not work, including seniors, children, and students.
Graph: Number of infected by occupation. Credit: Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic (ÚZIS ČR).
