Study: Working in Shifts Increases Risk of Coronavirus

A recent scientific study confirmed that people who work in shifts are more likely to be infected with the new Corona virus and to be hospitalized because of it, compared to those who have fixed working hours.

According to the British newspaper, The Guardian, the study included more than 280,000 participants between the ages of 40 and 69, whose health data were obtained from the UK Biobank, the largest biomedical database in the world.

In the study, conducted by researchers from the universities of Manchester and Oxford, fixed-hour work was defined as working from 9 in the morning to 5 in the evening, while the researchers pointed out that any difference from this time frame is considered "work in the shift system."

The researchers compared the health status of people who work fixed and regular hours with people working in the system of shifts, whether they were fixed night shifts or weekly shifts.

The study team found that shift workers were two and a half times more likely to be infected with the Coronavirus, regardless of the nature of the profession of those people.

They also noted that the chances of hospitalization due to infection with the virus three times increased among workers in fixed night shifts, compared to workers in weekly shifts.

Dr. John Blakeley, one of the main researchers in the study, said that “despite the difficulty of explaining the exact cause of the relationship between work shifts and infection with (Corona), it can be speculated that one of the most important possible reasons is that shift work greatly affects people's biological clock. This reduces their immune response. ”

For her part, Dr. Hannah Dorrington, who also participated in the study, stressed the need to improve the health and working conditions of shift workers, and to ensure that they follow measures to prevent corona, such as washing hands frequently, wearing masks and social distancing.

This study comes two weeks after the publication of another study that revealed that workers who work in shifts or shifts are more likely to have heart disease compared to people who work fixed hours.