Essential workers ranked as most in need of vaccine

A new UCSF study found that essential workers, especially in food and transportation industries, bore the greatest increased risk of death among Californians of working age. The authors suggest the employees be moved up in line for vaccinations.

Cooks, packaging machine operators, agricultural workers, bakers and construction laborers are among the riskiest jobs, the study found. Other highrisk occupations included sewing machine operators, shipping and receiving clerks, maintenance workers, customer service workers, truck drivers, maids and house cleaners.

“While we pay a lot of lip service to essential workers, when you see the actual occupations that rise to the top of the list as being at much more risk and associated with death, it screams out to you who’s really at risk,” said Kirsten BibbinsDomingo, a UCSF epidemiology and biostatistics professor who worked on the study.

Researchers examined death rates of Californians ages 18 to 65 — a group that accounts for a third of COVID19 deaths — from March through October, and compared them with prepandemic statistics to determine which occupations experienced the biggest increases in deaths. The study also evaluated race and various occupations.

The riskiest category included food and agricultural workers — everyone from farmworkers to food processors and meatpackers to cooks and others who work in restaurants — followed by transportation and logistics: people who pack, ship and deliver goods, including drivers. Many people in these categories continued to work during the lockdown.

Working adults in the 1865 range experienced a 22% increase in deaths during the pandemic, according to the study. Food and agriculture workers, however, had a 39% increase, with transportation and logistics workers seeing a 28% increase, facilities workers a 27% rise, and manufacturing workers a 23% increase.

Most of those jobs are held by lowerincome workers who don’t have the choice of working from home and often must work near others, the study said. Many lack proper protective gear like masks and sanitizer and don’t have adequate sick leave.

The study also found that Latino workers had a 36% increase in deaths during the pandemic and Black workers had a 28% increase compared with a 6% increase for white workers. Deaths among Asian health care workers rose 40% during the pandemic, while Black retail workers saw an 18% increase.