1. COVID-19 pandemic and days of absence from work in workers with flu-like symptoms in the City of Rome, Italy
- Author
-
de Giorgio, F., Ricci, E., Arena, E., Greco, A., and Ralli, M.
- Subjects
Settore MED/44 - MEDICINA DEL LAVORO ,Italy ,SARS-CoV-2 ,Rome ,COVID-19 ,Humans ,flu symptoms ,occupational medicine ,humans ,pandemics ,Occupational medicine ,Flu symptoms ,Pandemics - Abstract
COVID-19 has dramatically affected working forces. We aim to report our occupational medicine service's experience in managing suspected COVID-19 cases during the pandemic through a retrospec-tive observational study. We compared the number of days employees were absent from work due to flu-like symptoms from March 2020 to February 2021 to the same period the previous year (2019-2020). Two hundred thirty-four patients (+47.2% compared to the previous year) who tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 reported flu-like symp-toms; the number of days of absence from work was 2812 (+190.2% compared to the previous year). On average, employees with flu-like symptoms lost 12.07 working days compared to 6.12 in the previous year (p0.0001). In conclusion, in our sample COVID-19 has increased the number of working day loss. However, our approach proved to be important, especially during the first months of the pandemic, to limit SARS-CoV-2 spread in workplaces.
- Published
- 2022