UK LLC - COVID-19: Multi-Longitudinal Cohort Study into occupational factors and COVID Risk as part of PROTECT National Core Study

Infection and death rates linked to the SARS-COV-2 epidemic have been particularly high within the United Kingdom. One prominent source of increased risk throughout has been occupation, with several occupations identified as being high risk (e.g. health workers).

Differences in occupation characteristics (e.g. ability to work from home, contact with the public, working outside) have been considered important in explaining increase risk of SARS- COV-2 infection and death. There is however still great uncertainty regarding the influence of occupation, and within occupational factors on infection, disease severity, and death.

During the pandemic, participants of pre-existing studies, such as Understanding Society, the Millennium Cohort Study and Next Steps have completed surveys which ask questions about their health, work and behaviour. Data from a number of these studies are currently stored within the Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration, which is a large database held by a number of collaborating universities, with funding from the UK government. This data has been linked to other health databases, e.g. GP records. Data will be used to explore the link between occupation and Covid-19 infection. We will look for measures of occupational or occupational characteristics (e.g. key worker status, working from home), before comparing with the self- reported Covid-19 infection and test results at each data collection point. This will be repeated whilst taking into account factors such as age, gender, and ethnicity. We will initially explore the relationship in each study, before considering combining results across different studies.

Researchers at the University of Manchester and the London school of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine will be given access to data that is fully anonymised (with information such as names, addresses and postcodes removed). The findings will be published in journals, presented in conferences and summarised on our project website. No individual will be identifiable in these documents.