A COVID-19 Risk Assessment for the US Labor Force

Sammantha Maher; Alexandra E Hill; Peter Britton; Eli P Fenichel; Peter Daszak; Carlos Zambrana-Torrelio; Jude Bayham

Our analysis shows that approximately 80% of the US workforce has at least one 10 COVID-19 health risk factor, and approximately 11% of the US workforce is over 60 with at least one additional COVID-19 risk factor [ Table 2 ]. When obesity, the most common health factor, is excluded, 56% percent of the workforce is at risk, and 10% percent of the workforce is over 60 and at risk. We also consider social and demographic variables that have the potential to interact with or may cause health risks, such as smoking history or the inability to afford medical 15 care. For example, 11% of workers in industries deemed essential by the US government do not have health insurance (~10 million people). A lack of health care coverage or perceived inability to afford care could prevent patients from seeking treatment early, exacerbating risk of severe outcomes (11) . Our results show that 8% of the total workforce, equivalent to 12 million people, delayed medical treatment in the last 12 months due to cost. As with the health variables, we err 20 on the side of including variables with marginal significance in our analysis for added flexibility in future studies using our dataset.