Thread: Most at risk
View Single Post
  #11   Report Post  
Old May 11th 20, 09:14 PM posted to uk.transport.london
Recliner[_4_] Recliner[_4_] is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Jul 2019
Posts: 895
Default Most at risk

Someone Somewhere wrote:
On 11/05/2020 16:25, Recliner wrote:
Roland Perry wrote:
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...rds-chefs-and-
taxi-drivers-among-those-most-likely-to-die-with-covid-19-says-ons-
11986382


I'm not surprised by the care workers, because they're less likely to have
good PPE, more likely to be on zero hours contracts (and therefore less
likely to be tested or hospitalised if they feel unwell) and, of course,
much more likely to be in contact with virus-infected patients than most
NHS staff.

But I hadn't thought of security guards being in a high risk occupation.

I'd have thought the vast majority (maybe 90%) of NHS staff would not be
working day in, day out with covid-19 patients (why? well, at the peak
there were something like 20,000 in hospital at once - a 1:1 staff ratio
giving 24/7 coverage would mean something like 100,000 staff on the
basis of a 35 hour week. That wouldn't mean 1 person looking after 1
patient, more 0.5 nurses, 0.1 consultants, 0.1 porters and so on. The
NHS has 1.3M employees or something). Therefore any variance of death
rate could be lost in the statistical noise.


Yes, that's a very good point, which helps explain the gap between the
higher reported death rates of front-line NHS staff and the overall NHS
staff death rate.


If a care home has a covid-19 case, then there's every chance (care home
residents tend to wander a lot more around the entire home, and most
covid-19 patients in hospital tend to turn up once symptomatic vs care
home residents who will be there when asymptomatic and therefore people
don't know they need to take infection control precautions) a decent
proportion of the staff could be exposed, and given 30% or something of
care homes have cases then that's far more likely to lead to
statistically relevant differences.


Yes, and furthermore, care homes employ many agency staff, who routinely
work in more than one home and therefore are at even more risk of ecposure.