Editorial on Covid-19: Protecting worker health
24.03.2020IOM Principal Scientist Professor John Cherrie and Honorary Senior Scientist at IOM Dr Sean Semple have written an editorial entitled "Covid-19: Protecting worker health" for the Annals of Work Exposures and Health.
At the time of writing (5 March 2020) Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) has spread to 76 countries with over 93 000 cases (WHO, 2020a) around the world since it was first identified and described in China on 31 December 2019 (WHO, 2020b). The case fatality rate may be as high as 3.4% and, although the indications are that it is a mild, self-limiting illness for the majority of those infected, it clearly has the potential to cause significant disruption globally. Many countries are moving from the ‘containment’ to the ‘delay’ phase in controlling the outbreak with a recent UK model suggesting a potential peak in June 2020 (Danon et al., 2020).
The full editorial is available here.