Working at an office aisle desk raises risk of infection

OFFICE workers sitting next to an aisle may face 30 per cent more risk of contracting coronavirus than their colleagues by windows, analysis suggests.

Arup, an engineering, design and consultancy firm, found many offices would be able to get back to full capacity with one-metre social distancing but only a third of workers would be able to return if two-metre spacing remained.

Modelling of staff movements showed interactions between people increased 20 fold at some locations if all workers returned compared with a third of workers. But the risk was greater for those seated at an aisle desk than someone by the window as “interaction hotspots” and bottlenecks tended to occur more there.

The Government is expected to lower the two-metre rule to one metre this week to help businesses reopen.

However, new measures are likely to include the wearing of masks and sitting side by side.

Many other countries already have social distancing at one metre, and the World Health Organisation guidelines also suggest that one metre was sufficient.

The modelling was carried out on Arup’s own London offices using different layouts and based on employees sitting at their desks for around 7.5 hours a day, factoring in movement of personnel for breaks and journeys around the office.

The average time spent within proximity of each other across the day increased by 21 times when moving to single-metre spacing – from about 12 minutes to 4.5 hours.

The analysis concluded that moving to one-metre spacing would require careful planning of seating layout, circulation space and operations in order to mitigate the risks.