Optimized Workplace Risk Mitigation Measures for SARS-CoV-2 in 2022

Authors

Rowland Pettit
Bo Peng
Patrick Yu
Peter G Matos
Alexander L Greninger
Julie McCashin
Christopher Ian Amos

Publication Date

2-16-2023

Journal

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-023-29087-w

PMID

36797293

PMCID

PMC9933026

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

2-16-2023

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-Print

Published Open-Access

yes

Keywords

Humans, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 Testing, COVID-19, Workplace, Computational models, Viral infection, Health policy, Disease prevention

Abstract

596 million SARS-CoV-2 cases have been reported and over 12 billion vaccine doses have been administered. As vaccination rates increase, a gap in knowledge exists regarding appropriate thresholds for escalation and de-escalation of workplace COVID-19 preventative measures. We conducted 133,056 simulation experiments, evaluating the spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus in hypothesized working environments subject to COVID-19 infections from the community. We tested the rates of workplace-acquired infections based on applied isolation strategies, community infection rates, methods and scales of testing, non-pharmaceutical interventions, variant predominance, vaccination coverages, and vaccination efficacies. When 75% of a workforce is vaccinated with a 70% efficacious vaccine against infection, then no masking or routine testing + isolation strategies are needed to prevent workplace-acquired omicron variant infections when the community infection rate per 100,000 persons is ≤ 1. A CIR ≤ 30, and ≤ 120 would result in no workplace-acquired infections in this same scenario against the delta and alpha variants, respectively. Workforces with 100% worker vaccination can prevent workplace-acquired infections with higher community infection rates. Identifying and isolating workers with antigen-based SARS-CoV-2 testing methods results in the same or fewer workplace-acquired infections than testing with slower turnaround time polymerase chain reaction methods. Risk migration measures such as mask-wearing, testing, and isolation can be relaxed, or escalated, in commensurate with levels of community infections, workforce immunization, and risk tolerance. The interactive heatmap we provide can be used for immediate, parameter-based case count predictions to inform institutional policy making. The simulation approach we have described can be further used for future evaluation of strategies to mitigate COVID-19 spread.

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