Assisted Living Center Workers Most Likely to Catch COVID-19 at Work

As the nursing home industry struggles with a worker shortage, a new study published in the American Journal of Infection Control confirms that staff members’ fears about contracting COVID-19 at work are not unfounded.

Researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the workplace was a main source of COVID-19 infections for employees of long-term care centers such as nursing homes, assisted living communities, and rehabilitation facilities.

Previously, researchers hypothesized that COVID-19 incidences among long-term care staff was a result of non-occupational exposures, such as living in communities with higher rates of the disease. They surmised that use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and safety protocols would protect workers from infection while on the job.

The investigators examined SARS-CoV-2 exposure settings for more than 83,000 cases of COVID-19 among long-term care workers. They found health care settings were the exposure source reported most often (52%) followed by households (30.8%) and the community (25.6%).

Among cases in which work settings were reported as the source of infections, 61% involved long-term care facility employees.

However, once COVID-19 vaccinations became available, researchers observed a sharp decline in infections among long-term care center facility staff. From December 2020 through March 2021, workplace-associated exposures changed from being the most commonly reported exposure source to the least.

The researchers concluded that nursing home staff, regardless of their personal vaccination status, experienced reduced workplace exposure to COVID-19 due to vaccination among co-workers and facility residents.