Occupational infection control measures and frontline workers’ perceived COVID-19 risk during the fourth wave of the pandemic in Canada: A cross-sectional survey
Why this work is in the frame
A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, every person employed in Canada has the right to a safe work environment. Yet, research shows that essential workers in Canada have experienced a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 transmission and deaths throughout the pandemic. In light of ongoing reported COVID-19 outbreaks in Canadian essential sectors and rising national case numbers as of July 2021, this study aimed to examine workers’ perceptions of the prevalence and effectiveness of occupational COVID-19 control measures during the fourth wave of the pandemic in Canada. Methods: Individuals working on site in Canada from July 1 to November 30, 2021 were recruited through the Canadian Union of Public Employees (N=421). Data were collected on workplaces’ implementation of the COVID-19 Hierarchy of Controls. Adjusted odds ratios (AOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) generated from logistic regression models were used to estimate the likelihood of feeling protected at work vs. feeling unprotected or unsure according to participant characteristics and workplace control measures. Results: The 421 respondents were predominantly female (75%, N=316), college-educated (63%, N=265), and in non-management roles (86%, N=364). Participants in education (AOR=0.4, 95% CI=0.2-0.9) or transportation/warehousing (AOR=0.3, 95% CI=0.1-0.9) were less likely to feel protected than those in healthcare. Ventilation adjustments (16%, N=66) and random or universal COVID-19 testing were rare (≤3%, N≤13), 40% (N=170) of participants’ workplaces used a contact tracing program. Employees adherence to physical distancing and masking requirements varied by occupational sector. Physical barriers (AOR=2.8, 95% CI=1.4-16.8), handwashing stations (AOR=4.8, 95% CI=1.4-16.8), testing of close contacts (AOR=2.1, 95% CI=1.2-3.7), and temperature checks (AOR=2.2, 95% CI=1.0-4.7) were associated with feeling protected at work after accounting for sector and managerial effect. Conclusion: Limited COVID-19 controls were identified in transportation, manufacturing, warehousing, and education settings. Workers highlighted a need for improved ventilation, and upscaled asymptomatic screening, test and trace, and isolation efforts. Respondents’ uncertainty regarding the implementation of out-of-sight infection controls coupled with gaps in workers’ and scientists’ perceptions of effective safety measures indicate a need for improved communication strategies between occupational health experts, supervisors, and employees on pandemic risks and procedures.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 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 it