Documents Agius, Raymond 4 results

"Background
By law, covid-19 disease and deaths in workers may lead to coroners' inquests and/or Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigations.
Aims
This study assesses the adequacy of these statutory means to yield recommendations for prevention of acquiring covid-19 infection from work.
Methods
Covid-19 guidance from the chief coroner and the HSE was appraised, including using Office for National Statistics (ONS) data. Practitioners were asked to estimate the likelihood that covid-19 disease may have arisen from ‘near-miss' scenarios. Data from the judiciary and the HSE were analysed.
Results
The coroners' guidance allowed a wider range of reports of death than did the HSE and conformed better with ONS data on covid-19 mortality by occupation. In the practitioner survey, 62 respondents considered a higher likelihood that reported covid-19 cases would have arisen from the scenario deemed unreportable as a ‘dangerous occurrence' by HSE than the reportable scenario (P < 0.001). On average there was only one coroner's report to prevent future death from occupational disease every year in England and Wales. The HSE dealt with a yearly average of 1611 reports of work-related disease including 104 on biological agents, but has received about 9000 covid-19 reports.
Conclusions
Current HSE guidance for reporting work-related covid-19 may miss many thousands of cases and needs further iteration. Coroners have very limited experience of inquiry into occupational disease caused by biological agents compared with the HSE. Concerns regarding national policy such as on protective equipment warrant a full public inquiry."

"A second technical summary by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) reports 8666 covid-19 notifications (including 125 deaths) in Great Britain where occupational exposure was suspected as the cause during the pandemic up to 8 August 2020 [1]. These notifications arise out of the statutory duty of employers (usually acting on a medical diagnosis) to notify such cases to the HSE (or local authorities) as specified in the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (2013) (RIDDOR). ..."

"The British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS) COVID-19 Working Group developed a control banding matrix to provide guidance for employers and others to help assess the risks of COVID-19 infection during the pandemic. The matrix was based on occupational hygiene principles and the judgement of the occupational health practitioners involved; since objective data on workers' exposure were unavailable. Users of the matrix identify one of five exposure categories based on generic job descriptions and example occupations, and these categories are linked to generic guidance on interventions at source, on the exposure pathway and for individual workers. The risk matrix was published on the BOHS website and the guidance has been downloaded more than 2000 times. The matrix has had limited evaluation for reliability, but the data suggest that the highest exposure ranked jobs were associated with higher age-standardized mortality in Britain during the pandemic. However, there was considerable variability in exposure assignments between assessors, which underlines the need for the control guidance to be precautionary. The BOHS calls on academic researchers to undertake further work to validate the reliability of the tool."