The infections at work from Covid-19 reported to Inail from the beginning of the pandemic until last March 31 are 165,528, equal to a quarter of the reports of accidents at work arrived from January 2020 and to 4.6% of all national infections communicated by the Higher Institute of Health (Iss) on the same date. As emerges from the 15th national report prepared by the Statistical Actuarial Consultancy of Inail, the “second wave” of infections, the effects of which continued in 2021, especially in January and to a lesser extent in February and March, had a greater impact intense of the first even in the workplace.
With 109,487 reported infections, the period October 2020-March 2021, in fact, accounts for 66.1% of the total accident reports from Covid-19, more than double compared to the 50,699 in the quarter March-May 2020 (30.6% ). Even taking into consideration only the first three months of the “second wave”, the most critical ones of October-December 2020, the percentage of infections (53.5%) is still higher.
The fatal cases from Covid-19 reported to the Institute as of March 31st are 551, approximately one third of the total deaths at work reported to the Institute since January 2020, with an incidence of 0.5% of the total deaths new Coronavirus nationals recorded by the ISS on the same date.
82.8% of the deaths are men, but the majority of infections (69.3%) concern women, while the average age of the infected since the beginning of the epidemic is 46 years for both sexes and rises to 59 years for deaths (59 for men and 57 for women).
Among the productive activities, the health and social assistance sector – which includes hospitals, nursing and retirement homes, institutes, university clinics and polyclinics, residences for the elderly and disabled – is in first place with 67.5% of reported infections. and 27.4% of codified fatal cases, followed by the public administration (activities of the bodies responsible for health – Asl – and regional, provincial and municipal administrators), with 9.2% of infections and 9.6% of fatal cases. The other sectors most affected are rental and business support services (surveillance, cleaning and call centers), manufacturing (chemical and pharmaceutical processing workers, printing, food industry), accommodation and catering services, transport and storage, in second place for number of deaths with 13.2% of the total, other service activities (funeral home, laundry, repair of computers and personal goods, hairdressers, wellness centers …), trade wholesale and retail and professional, scientific and technical activities (labor consultants, company logistics, business management consultants).
Compared to the trend observed in the “second wave” of infections, a trend reversal emerges in February and March. Limiting the analysis to the complaints presented in the last two months, in fact, health and social assistance falls below the threshold of 50% of the codified cases, repositioning itself on the same levels as in the summer period, probably thanks to the effectiveness of vaccinations, which involved in priority is given to health personnel. Other productive sectors – such as transport, accommodation and catering services, trade and information and communication services, which collectively collect about 20% of complaints in the two-month period February-March 2021 – instead recorded an increase in work-related infections.