Purpose: More than 30,000 meat production workers have reported COVID-19 infections. The purpose was to determine if counties with higher proportions of population employed in meat processing had higher incidence of COVID-19 infection after accounting for other population level risk factors. Methods: COVID-19 case data were obtained from the COVID-19 Data. The proportion of population employed at meat processing facilities was obtained from Bureau of Labor Statistics. Other county level variables included race/ethnicity, poverty, education, population residing in nursing home facilities; jail population, and presence of a prison facility.
Poisson regression generated incidence rate ratios (IRR) to model the association between proportion employed in meat processing and the incidence of COVID-19 while controlling for other factors. State was also included as a covariate to account for differences in testing between states. Maps with county level risk estimates were generated to visualize potential hotspots. Results: Counties with higher proportion of employment in meat processing facilities had significantly higher incidence of COVID-19 (IRR ¼ 1.77; 95% CI: 1.76-1.78) after adjusting for other county level variables. Controlling for differences between states resulted in a significantly higher rate of COVID-19 in counties with higher proportions employed in meat processing facilities (IRR ¼ 1.25; 95% CI: 1.24-1.26). Counties with higher proportion of Black and Hispanic populations, higher nursing home populations, and a prison located in the county also had significantly higher incidence of COVID-19. Conclusions: After accounting for state differences and other county level factors, higher levels of employment in meat processing facilities increased the incidence of COVID-19 infection. 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  33  34  35  36  37  38  39  40  41  42  43  44  45  46  47  48  49  50  51  52  53  54  55  56  57  58  59  60  61  62  63 64