A new study tracking the results of more than 730,000 COVID-19 tests found construction workers had the highest positivity rates for asymptomatic cases of any occupation, including health care staff, first responders, correctional personnel and elderly care workers, according to www.constructiondive.com.
Conducted in Los Angeles between August and October, the study paired positive test results with the answers to a questionnaire that asked about occupation. The study, which was administered by testing firm Curative and has not been certified by peer review, showed construction workers had a positivity rate of 5.7% for individuals who were asymptomatic and 10.1% for those with symptoms.
The study comes when an advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is deciding whether essential workers, including those in construction, should be second in line to receive the first available vaccine doses.
Construction had a 5.7% positivity rate for individuals who were asymptomatic; the next highest industry, food services, had just a 3.8% rate. For symptomatic cases, only correction workers had a higher positivity rate—12.5%—compared with 10.1% in construction.
Construction industry advocates say the traditional use of personal protective equipment in construction has made compliance during the pandemic easier than in other industries. They say PPE, along with staggered work shifts, regular site disinfecting and social distancing, have reduced COVID-19 spread on job sites.
However, public health departments in Washington state, Michigan and Nashville, Tenn., found construction to be among the top three occupational settings where outbreaks occurred, and a CDC study in Utah found construction had the second highest number of cases among all industries studied. Another recent study from the University of Texas concluded construction workers were five times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than workers in all other industries.
Brian Turmail, vice president of public affairs at the Associated General Contractors of America, acknowledged the industry’s COVID-19 case numbers are increasing but said there is no definitive data that connects infection among construction workers to job-site spread, indicating it is spreading via workers’ local communities.
Turmail says a challenge is keeping workers with COVID-19 off the job site when so many are asymptomatic. Overall, the study found among all the subjects who tested positive, 42.3% were asymptomatic.
