Shops and public transport have higher Covid risk than the office

PEOPLE who work in the office are at less risk of catching Covid than those who go to the shops or use public transport, a study reveals.

The figures show that when compared with not going out at all, being at work increases a person’s chance of infection by a fifth.

There is an 82 per cent increase in risk for public transport use and 69 per cent for shopping.

Academics at University College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine worked on the study.

More than 10,000 Britons enrolled in Virus Watch were reviewed throughout the second wave of the pandemic last winter.

One in eight people (1,257) tested positive for Covid, and the majority were deemed to be in a non-household environment.

In a pre-print, published on medrxiv, a website for health articles, the researchers say that leaving home for work increased a person’s likelihood of catching Covid by 78 per cent.

However, when researchers accounted for public-transport usage, going to the office was only directly responsible for a 20 per cent increase.

Public transport more than once a week saw one’s risk almost double, with a relative increase in infection risk of 82 per cent when accounting for other fac- tors. “Although those going to work had a substantially higher risk of infection, much of this was explained by public or shared transport use and other variables,” the researchers say.

They add: “The research suggests that working from home and consequently avoiding the need to use public or shared transport has a significant impact on risk at individual and population level.”

Dr Simon Williams, senior lecturer in people and organisation at Swansea University, said: “Telling people to work from home has been shown to effectively reduce contacts. And if we reduce contacts we reduce transmission opportunities.”