Almost a fourth of New York City’s forefront travel laborers may have contracted COVID-19 — and the individuals who became ill probably gotten the infection at work, a primer overview delivered Monday by New York University shows.
NYU specialists in July dispatched a goal-oriented examination to realize why so huge numbers of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s 70,000 workers contracted the infection and how the pandemic has affected their emotional wellness.
The analysts got polls from 645 bleeding edge NYC Transit representatives, and 24% of them announced a positive COVID-19 determination or immunizer test — essentially higher than an evaluation delivered by Gov. Cuomo on May 13, which examined immunizer tests and found that 14% of travel laborers had gotten the infection.
The infection — which has murdered in any event 131 MTA laborers — likely spread rapidly inside travel work environments, said Robyn Gershon, the NYU disease transmission expert driving the examination.
Gershon’s group found that the individuals who gotten the malady didn’t live in regions with high contamination rates, which means they probably became ill at work, she said.
“From our New York City information, travel laborers were twice as prone to be living in a generally safe neighborhood in the event that they were positive, so it would appear that it most likely was business related,” said Gershon. “We’ll likely always be unable to completely prod that separated, yet we’re accomplishing additionally burrowing.”
Gershon and her group look for an award from the National Institutes of Health to proceed with the examination, which could a years ago. The investigation will jump further into the psychological well-being sway the pandemic has had on city travel laborers, so a considerable lot of whom were contaminated in March and April that the MTA had to briefly slice tram administration because of a labor force lack.
Gershon recently headed a test into the clearing of the Word Trade Center pinnacles during the 9/11 fear assaults. Her discoveries prompted changes to the city’s fire code — yet she fears many travel laborers will experience the ill effects of PTSD like 9/11 specialists on call.
“Long haul PTSD is annihilating to your life. We followed up with the World Trade Center investigation 16 years after … what’s more, a considerable lot of them have serious effect,” Gershon said. “They can’t leave their condos. They can’t work. They’ve gotten divorces. That is the thing that we would prefer not to happen to this gathering.”
MTA authorities said NYU’s discoveries were just primer. The organization’s information show that only 3,921 — or 7.4% — of the workers at NYC Transit, the office’s biggest auxiliary, gotten COVID-19.
“On the off chance that that is valid … that is a lot of lower than the general New York City contamination rate,” said Gershon. “I’m thinking if individuals went to their family specialist and got tried perhaps the MTA doesn’t think about those.”
MTA representative Abbey Collins said the review “is a survey, not an examination,” and contended the figures NYU announced were higher in light of the fact that positive cases were self-revealed by travel laborers.
“We trust any future ‘study’ depends on science, information and realities as the MTA’s most noteworthy need remains the security of our labor force,” Collins said.
Tony Utano, leader of Transport Workers Union Local 100, which speaks to about 40,000 MTA laborers and teamed up with NYU on the exploration, said his individuals ought to be given fast testing to forestall another significant flare-up.
“We put the city on our shoulders when the pandemic hit, and we are as yet conveying it forward. It has been a substantial weight,” said Utano. “We have to remain careful and push forward with new and better approaches to protect our common legends actually moving great many riders daily.”