Occupational groups

A CITF-funded study published in Frontiers in Public Health and led by Dr. Nadine Kronfli (McGill University Health Centre) showed that correctional officers were most likely to have acquired SARS-CoV-2 but least likely to be vaccinated when compared to all other correctional workers, underscoring the importance of addressing both occupational risks and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy to mitigate future outbreaks in the provincial prisons in Quebec.

A CITF-funded study now published in Microbiology Spectrum estimated rates of symptomatic and asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 among K-12 students and staff in British Columbia from April to June 2021.

A preprint, not yet peer-reviewed, from a CITF-funded study, suggests that the chances of adults getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 was lower in the school setting than it was in the community, even during the first Omicron wave.

New results from a CITF-funded study led by University of British Columbia researchers Drs. Pascal Lavoie and Louise Mâsse, and published in the Journal of Affective Disorders Reports indicates that 18.7% of school staff in Vancouver reported moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety.

Early in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, virus transmission and the risk of infection among education workers was unclear. Upon studying this population in Ontario, CITF-funded researchers Drs. Brenda Coleman, Sharon Straus and Allison McGeer, from the University of Toronto, revealed that the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission was significantly higher between people living in the same household than between people in work or other social situations. They emphasize that practicing protective measures when a household member has been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 home would help reduce the risk of infection. Their results were recently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.