UAlbany Conducts Largest Study on COVID-19 Symptoms & Deaths Among U.S. Healthcare Workers

ALBANY, N.Y. (August 15, 2022) – A recent study led by the UAlbany School of Public Health examined COVID-19 symptoms and deaths among healthcare workers to better understand the impact of COVID-19. It is one of the few studies—and the largest to date—that assesses fatality and symptoms for U.S. healthcare workers.

“It’s important to evaluate how COVID-19 impacted healthcare workers because they are a highly susceptible subpopulation due to their work,” explains Shao Lin, lead author of the study. “They often face more exposure to the virus than the average person, particularly when there are surges in COVID-19 cases.”

Using data obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases, the research team compared the demographics and COVID-19 symptoms of healthcare workers, with a focus on looking at the differences between those who died from COVID-19 and those who did not. They also compared this data to non-healthcare workers who had COVID-19. Over 6 million COVID-19 cases were analyzed from January 2020 to October 2021.

Results showed that the fatality rate for U.S. healthcare workers was 0.33 percent compared to a 2.48 percent fatality rate for the general population. There were 440,044 cases of COVID-19 among healthcare workers, with 1,469 deaths.

“While we found that the fatality rate of healthcare workers was significantly lower than the general population, we did find that healthcare workers who died had severe indicators and symptoms of COVID-19, which may be due to their proximity to and longer duration of exposure,” Lin says. “The lower fatality rate may be due to healthcare workers’ knowledge-- and access to treatment may also have helped to prevent death.”

Healthcare workers who died of COVID-19 were disproportionately over 50 years old, male, and Black or Asian. Preexisting health conditions were the most important predictor of death amongst healthcare workers, followed by shortness of breath, fever, cough, nausea/vomiting, and diarrhea. The highest risk for death among healthcare workers was for the 50–59-year-old age group. Of those who died, 27.17 percent were Black healthcare workers and 21.47 percent were Asian healthcare workers, significantly higher than those in the three reference groups.

“The disproportionate burden of deaths from COVID-19 for Black and Asian healthcare workers may be due to factors that place these groups more at risk, such as living in overcrowded neighborhoods, higher body mass index, low incomes, and higher rates of coronary heart disease (a high risk comorbidity of COVID-19 death), which all may make COVID-19 easier to be spread and be more severe,” Lin explains.

Almost one third of healthcare worker deaths occurred in June of 2020, during a surge in COVID-19 cases around the country. This is likely because of an increase in exposure for healthcare workers, who were also dealing with insufficient protection, limited resources, overcrowded care units, and heavy workloads from an influx of patients.

“This study shows that there are clinical indicators and specific symptoms that may predict COVID-19 related deaths among U.S. healthcare workers,” says Lin.

Collaborators on the study, which can be found in Emerging Infectious Diseases, include researchers at Sun Yat-Sen University School of Public Health, UAlbany’s College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland security, and Cybersecurity, and the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health.