Elevated COVID-19 Case Rates of Government Employees, District of Columbia, 2020–2022

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-28-2022

Publication Title

Annals of Work Exposures and Health

DOI

10.1093/annweh/wxac049

ISSN

2398-7316

Abstract

Objectives

To estimate the rate ratio (RR) of reported Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases among governmental employees from seven District of Columbia (D.C.) departments from March 2020 to February 2022.

Methods

Poisson regression models were used to estimate the RR by department, using D.C. residents as the reference and the person-day as the offset. The COVID-19 surveillance data and the full-time equivalent hours for each department were obtained from the D.C. governmental websites.

Results

Five of the seven departments had statistically significant higher COVID-19 case rates than D.C. residents. Stratified by four pandemic stages, RR of Fire and Emergency Medical Services (FEMS), Office of Unified Communication (OUC), and Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) were consistently >1: FEMS: 3.34 (95% confidence interval, CI [2.94, 3.77]), 2.39 (95% CI [2.06, 2.75]), 2.48 (95% CI [2.06, 2.95]), and 3.90 (95% CI [3.56, 4.26]), respectively; OUC: 1.47 (95% CI [0.92, 2.18]), 2.72 (95% CI [1.93, 3.69]), 1.85 (95% CI [1.09, 2.92]), and 2.18 (95% CI [1.62, 2.85]), respectively; and MPD: 2.33 (95% CI [2.11, 2.58]), 1.96 (95% CI [1.75, 2.18]), 1.52 (95% CI [1.29, 1.77]), and 1.76 (95% CI [1.60, 1.92]), respectively.

Conclusions

The results suggested higher case rates for emergency responders and frontline personnel than for general population in D.C.

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