Why are the supermarket workers not getting sick?

[bulletjournalbilly]

So tell me this ...if supermarkets are a "danger zone" why aren't the supermarket workers all dying and getting sick with this "killer virus"?

Why hasn’t there been a huge crisis in dentists dying or filling up hospitals? This is the one profession dealing all day with aerosol spray from multiple strangers. Why didn’t all the beauticians and therapists and nail techs get struck down?

Well those are professions who wear PPE and practice high levels of hygiene under normal circumstances so we’re already protecting themselves before we even heard of Covid19 and they closed down completely very quickly.

Half our staff are off shielding.

Why hasn’t there been a huge crisis in dentists dying or filling up hospitals? This is the one profession dealing all day with aerosol spray from multiple strangers. Why didn’t all the beauticians and therapists and nail techs get struck down?

Most of them closed down with immediate effect and I know all the dentists in my area closed before the order came through.

the press doesn’t want to scare people away from supermarkets

This.

So the data is out there in this thread for ages and co-morbidities, here is the NHS England data for hospital deaths with a positive test up to May 19th from www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

                   Pre-existing condition
                          Yes    No

0 - 19 yrs 11 3
20 - 39 150 32
40 - 59 1,758 236
60 - 79 9,116 550
80+ 12,764 460

I work in a supermarket and not one of us have knowingly had it. A customer asked me the other day, I hadn't thought about it beforehand.

Because customers aren't there long enough for high viral load?

Living in a small town our local Tesco is staffed by the same people who've worked there for years

My friend I have noticed a lot of them have been replaced with a much younger team and the staff from pre lock down have disappeared 😱

@zafferana

Yes, I will definitely take an antibody test as soon as they are available to supermarket workers. It will be interesting to know if it was coronavirus.

The risks of an overwhelmed health service and businesses collapsing with a combination of unpredictable supply chains and unpredictable staffing is being ignored in this thread too Well said, MRex.

No adverts locally for supermarket workers. They seem to be well-staffed. I think OP is right to notice the low risk.

Supermarkets vary by size, some mini-marts are also referred to as supermarkets although I doubt they are what people first think of.

There was an article in the Health Service Journal yesterday which suggested that Health Staff are far more at risk in enclosed rest areas and coffee rooms than they are in their work locations. In part due to the enclosed environment, but also because staff don’t wear PPE or take extra precautions in rest areas.

We know that Transmission of coronavirus is already significantly higher indoors compared with outside, and higher still, in small enclosed rooms where people are in close proximity.

We also know that measures like social distancing, Appropriate PPE and good hygiene help to further prevent the Spread of infection.

So now large airey supermarkets offer better protection than pokey offices, especially with the additional measures in place.

During the prelockdown madness though, the crowds could have increased the risks to supermarket workers, especially those in more vulnerable groups.

Sadly, some supermarket workers have lost their lives, most likely after contracting the disease before adequate measures were in place to minimise spread (and also from other non-work environments). The risks of acquiring coronavirus are now much lower and the risks of dying, lower still.

Probably because supermarket workers aren’t spending hours in intensive care depts looking after patients with a massive viral load or having any involvement in aerosol generating procedures day on day out.

Contact or lack of it - don’t you have to be in close contact for at least 15 minutes to be at risk of catching it?

And before anyone jumps down my neck, I’m working part time in a supermarket and haven’t had it, neither have any of my colleagues. I’ve not heard any reports of any other of our outlets being affected either.

They are!

Thanks @Walkaround. It bears out what I thought - 43 deaths per 100,000 people in this area is not exactly high - particularly when you consider that we've shut down the country for that.

There were 173 DV murders last year, so there does not appear to be an increase.

I wonder how many undiscovered bodies there are at the moment?

We've shut down the country so that there's enough capacity in the NHS to treat everybody who needs it. There is so little slack in the NHS that even quite a small number of extra seriously ill patients could have overwhelmed the NHS.

Also, vital services had to be kept going. We'd all have been up the creek if the National Grid etc had been unable to keep going.

Bad as the lockdown has been, the alternative would have been worse.

How do you know that they aren't?

They aren't in constant direct contact with known sick people like frontline health workers, so I wouldn't expect them to be as badly affected.

They also take strict precautions.

A much loved teacher in my best friends school died, along with her sister. Teachers do get it, I'm sure shop workers do too.

Some are. A man in his early 50’s who works at my local Asda passed away a few weeks back. I knew him a little as I’ve been going into the store for years and he was also a close family friend to a friend of mines family. They did a minutes silence for him whilst I was doing my shopping and it was heartbreaking seeing the staff get upset.

The ONS published the stats on this.

Retail workers are in the top ten professions for dying from Coronavirus.

The risk is nearly double that of the rest of the population. They are far more likely to die than health workers but less likely to die than security guards, taxi drivers and bus drivers.

It was all reported in the papers.

My dp works in a supermarket and a few of his colleagues have been coming into work with symptoms!! 😡🤬😡🤬😡

Also remember it is only just recently that they have been able to get tested to know they even had the virus, and this supermarket worker has died doesn't make the news.

Not sure they haven't been getting sick

Supermarket staff are the forgotten key workers in all this. Getting on with it and not complaining. No PPE, difficulty social distancing, no demanding special treatment, especially at first, but they plodded on, not making a fuss or commotion about it

Hats off to them

Probably because supermarket workers aren’t spending hours in intensive care depts looking after patients with a massive viral load or having any involvement in aerosol generating procedures day on day out.

Sighs

Retail workers have higher coronavirus death rates than such doctors and rises!

RTF ONS statistics!!!!!