- Project number: F 2562
- Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
- Status: Ongoing Project
- Planned end: 2026-06-30
Description:
The Gutenberg COVID-19 Study (GCS) is a cohort study conducted in the Mainz-Bingen region with 10,250 participants between the age of 25 and 85 years. The study assessed the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the population at three different times between October 2020 and July 2022. BAuA is responsible for coding the current occupations of the GCS participants.
This project aims to identify groups of employees with an increased risk of infection, and additionally, to create a data-based COVID-19 Job Exposure Matrix (JEM). The JEM describes how frequently persons in certain occupational groups were exposed to possible transmission risks during the pandemic and assigns the corresponding values to the individual occupations. The JEM can be used by other epidemiological studies with occupational information, but without the data regarding occupational exposures. This way occupational causes of increased infection risks can be investigated.
Furthermore, as a separate aspect of this project, the willingness to be vaccinated and the vaccination status of the GCS participants during the study will be evaluated. This will be conducted according to occupational groups as well as in regards to the job complexity level and the activity as a supervisor and manager. After accounting for socio-demographic differences and attitudes toward vaccination in general, the influence of workplace characteristics, the ability to work from home, vaccine willingness and adherence will be examined.
The findings of the study will help to develop more effective, job-specific infection protection measures in the future.