Infection Rate and Risk Factors of SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Retail Workers at the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Quebec, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background/Objectives: During the pandemic, client-facing workers were perceived to be at greater risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. This study investigated the risk factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection among a cohort of 304 retail workers in the Quebec City metropolitan area. Methods: After providing consent, participants were interviewed to gather information on demographic, socioeconomic, behavioural, and occupational variables. They were subsequently followed for up to five visits, scheduled every 12 ± 4 weeks. The study covered critical periods before and during the emergence of the Omicron variants and included retrospective reporting of COVID-19 symptoms and virus detection tests to capture the pandemic’s early stages. Results: During the observation period, 173 (57%) participants experienced a first episode of COVID-19. Serological evidence of recent infection was detected in 160 participants (53%), while 117 (38%) reported a positive virus detection test. In adjusted analyses, risk factors for infection included younger age, a diagnosis of lung disease, longer weekly working hours, more frequent social gatherings, and having received fewer than three doses of vaccine. Notably, the increased risk associated with younger age and longer working hours was observed only after the relaxation of public health measures in the spring of 2022. Conclusions: These data suggest that during the early years of the pandemic when strict public health measures were in place, retail work was not a significant risk factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection in Quebec City metropolitan area. These findings highlight the complex dynamics of COVID-19 transmission and the effectiveness of workplace protective measures.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".