Day after day there are reports of the spread of Covid-19 and the new case counts in the news. More often than not, these reports focus on restaurants and bars as a major cause for the spread of the virus. I suggested in the blog on September 24 that a likely overlooked source of virus spread was people going back to work. I could not find statistics to back this up until I saw this chart on the CBC National News on October 18.
This chart does not include the two largest categories, long term care homes and health care. Of the remainder, it clearly shows that 45% of cases are from Industrial settings (manufacturing) and 17% are from Congregate living (group homes). Another 15% is from general community spread. Only 4% of cases are from “Food/drink/retail”. Another suspected source of infection that is often reported is schools. This accounts for only 5% of cases.
The percentage for Food is in fact a lot lower. Contact tracing fails to identify the source of infection in over 50% of cases.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-ontario-cases-data-1.5726687
Since restaurants and bars record the names of patrons, contact tracing these cases is quite good and there will not be very many in the 50% of cases that are not traced. So instead of 4%, the total infections occurring in bars and restaurants is only about 2%.
Why the news keeps focusing on bars and restaurants as the major cause of virus spread is beyond me. Journalists may be excused since this data seems to be very hard to locate, but public health should know this data and should be reporting it so that the general public understands that being out at work and out in the community in general is their biggest risk of contracting the virus. And public health should not be recommending that bars and restaurants be closed, they are not a significant source of the spread of Covid-19.
Thank you for sharing this research.
Thank you for sharing this research.