# Occupational-related risk of testing SARS-CoV-2 positive for publicly employed medical doctors in Sweden: A nationwide cohort study

## TL;DR

This study found that doctors in infectious disease and geriatric medicine had higher risks of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 due to patient exposure in Sweden.

## Contribution

The study identifies specific medical specialties with elevated occupational risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection using nationwide data.

## Key findings

- Infectious Disease doctors had a 2.5 times higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to reference groups in early 2020.
- Geriatric Medicine doctors showed consistently elevated risk throughout the study period.
- Risk decreased over time but remained higher in specialties with frequent patient contact.

## Abstract

Doctors have an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection caused by exposure to contagious patients. We aimed to identify which clinical specialities among medical doctors had the highest occupation-related risk of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, utilizing data for all publicly employed medical doctors in Sweden.

Data regarding positive SARS-CoV-2 test results and employment for publicly employed doctors in Sweden were divided into three observation periods: 1) 1 February to 31 December 2020, 2) 1 January to 30 June 2021 and 3) 1 July 2021 to 31 March 2022. Individuals were stratified according to occupation clinic and compared with clinical occupations with little to no patient contact. The risk of testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 was estimated using Cox proportional hazards regression, with sex, age and vaccination status as covariates.

The study cohort included all publicly employed doctors in Sweden: 35,028 individuals. In the first period, Infectious Disease doctors had the highest incidence of SARS-CoV-2 positive tests, with an incidence of 20.2 %, compared with 8.7 % in the reference group, and an adjusted hazard ratio of 2.5 (95% confidence interval 2.02–3.04), which decreased during period 2–3. Doctors in Geriatric Medicine had an elevated risk throughout the whole study period.

Our study shows an association between working in a speciality that involves caring for contagious COVID-19 patients, which raises concerns about infection control measures and routines being insufficient to prevent occupational infection in future pandemics.