Construction’s total suspected COVID outbreaks revealed

More than 150 suspected outbreaks of acute respiratory infection have been recorded on construction sites since Public Health England (PHE) started collecting data last year, Construction News can reveal.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, CN obtained the figures for all such reports to England’s health monitor from July 2020 until late February 2021. The data shows that construction sites have reported 152 cases of acute respiratory infection to health protection teams. A further six building contractor offices were subject to suspected outbreaks during the period, it can also be revealed.

Since last summer, such reports are supposed to be made if there is more than one case of COVID-19 in a workplace. Health teams then carry out risk assessments, provide advice and introduce controls on site if necessary.

In November, Professor Calum Semple, a member of the UK Government’s SAGE advisory group, told Sky News that he had been “surprised” at the level of coronavirus transmission in construction, with more work occurring indoors than some had supposed. Construction was labelled as an “outdoor activity” in UK Government guidance released in May. Prof Semple declined to elaborate on his comments about the industry when contacted by CN.

According to the data obtained from PHE, construction had fewer suspected outbreaks than some other sectors that remained open throughout the pandemic, including retail, which submitted 536 reports.

Engineering firms filed 187 reports, the data shows, while a category labelled “other manufacturing and packing (non-food)” had 199 reports.

Some 114 reports came from the police – the workforce of which, at just over 200,000 people, is dwarfed by the millions working in the construction sector.

PHE noted that after tests were carried out, not all of the reports would have been confirmed as outbreaks of COVID-19 – defined as two or more cases of the virus linked to one setting. It added that its figures were “not an exhaustive listing”.

British Safety Council chairman Lawrence Waterman said the statistics and the way in which they were obtained highlight the lack of clear data collection on the issue over the past year. He said the selective self-reporting of the cases was likely to have skewed the figures.

“What we’re getting is glimpses and shadows cast – we’re not getting strong data that we can really rely on because there isn’t a rigorous reporting regime.

“A lot of what we do in health and safety is [done] by properly assessing the past and making sure we don’t repeat the mistakes. If, with COVID, we’re not gathering data properly on how infections have happened in the workplace, we’re going to be less good at managing future risks.”

Office for National Statistics (ONS) data for 2020 showed that ‘elementary construction occupations’ was the seventh worst category for proportional COVID-19 deaths, with 70 deaths among those people equating to a rate of 82.1 per 100,000, according to the statistical body.

In total, 420 people working in construction roles died with coronavirus in 2020, according to the ONS. The figures do not show where the disease was contracted.

Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told CN that, as one of the sectors operating throughout the pandemic, construction should have been a priority area for environmental health and health and safety teams monitoring outbreaks.

He said: “I think what we’re seeing is that the policies of austerity over the last decade have left the UK less well prepared than it should have been for the pandemic. There should not be limitations to the data [collected officially]; there should have been a robust system in place to gather it.”

McKee is a member of the Independent SAGE group of scientists set up to provide alternative comment on the UK’s pandemic strategy. He said: “We’ve argued from early on that there should have been a proactive system [to identify] workplaces that were COVID-safe. In the same way restaurants have food-safety ratings, we should have had COVID-safety ratings as well for ventilation and so on.”

Andrew Watterson, a professor researching occupational health at the University of Stirling, said he is concerned by the lack of clear data on outbreaks in workplaces and believes there is underreporting taking place across various industries.

“Employers tend to stress the difficulty rather than the possibility of reporting an outbreak,” he said. “If we said we’d regard any cases reported as occupational COVID cases, that would have been the easiest thing to do.

“If we get new strains, there are still going to be issues rolling on. And if we’re talking about justice in the workplace, then [for] people who have contracted long-COVID because of exposure at work it is important [that evidence] is pursued.”

PHE, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Department of Health and Social Care were all contacted on this story, but none provided a comment.

Last week, a government spokesperson responded to a think-tank’s report critical of its “light touch” approach to health and safety during the pandemic, as well as the alleged underfunding of the Health and Safety Executive.

The spokesperson said, at the time: “Throughout the pandemic we have worked with trade unions, businesses and medical experts to produce comprehensive ​and regularly updated guidance across all sectors so that businesses permitted to remain open can do so in a way that is as safe as possible.”

He added: ​“As we begin to reopen our economy, we have also extended free asymptomatic testing kits for workplaces to all businesses to help stop people unknowingly spreading the virus.

“Employers have a duty to protect the health and safety of their employees – this includes by supporting those who can reasonably work from home to do so.”

Asked how long businesses should expect to have to keep coronavirus restrictions in place, McKee said he was optimistic about the future.

“I’m reasonably confident that, by next spring, we should be back to normal,” he said. “I’m not one of those people who thinks it’ll be like influenza, when you have to have a vaccine every year. This is not the influenza virus […] Influenza has lots and lots of new variants; with coronavirus we’re getting the same mutations arising in different parts of the world.

“I think it could be the case that we get to the stage where there could be very low levels and get an occasional imported outbreak like we do with meningitis or measles. But I would be very surprised if it was like influenza with a new variant every year. There’s still some debate about that, but that’s what many think.”