Increases in absenteeism among health care workers in Hong Kong during influenza epidemics, 2004–2009

BMC Infectious Diseases

Table 3 The absolute and relative change in mean daily ARI-related sickness absence rates by periods^a

Absolute change in mean daily ARI-related sickness absence rate (%)
Staff type	Epidemic period^b	Containment period^c	Mitigation period^d
Medical	0.001 (−0.005, 0.008)	0.042 (0.028, 0.057)	0.082 (0.075, 0.089)
Nursing	0.06 (0.04, 0.08)	0.05 (0.01, 0.09)	0.15 (0.13, 0.17)
Allied Health	0.03 (0.01, 0.05)	0.06 (0.02, 0.11)	0.16 (0.14, 0.18)
Management	−0.004 (−0.061, 0.054)	0.118 (−0.017, 0.253)	0.117 (0.052, 0.183)
Supporting	0.08 (0.06, 0.10)	0.16 (0.12, 0.20)	0.29 (0.28, 0.31)
Overall	0.06 (0.05, 0.07)	0.10 (0.07, 0.12)	0.21 (0.19, 0.22)
Relative change in mean daily ARI-related sickness absence rate (%)
Staff type	Epidemic period	Containment period	Mitigation period
Medical	28.7 (−83.6, 141.0)	771.2 (509.1, 1033.4)	1496.8 (1369.4, 1624.2)
Nursing	18.2 (13.1, 23.4)	14.5 (2.4, 26.5)	44.0 (38.1, 49.9)
Allied Health	21.1 (5.2, 37.1)	51.2 (14.1, 88.4)	132.5 (114.5, 150.6)
Management	−2.9 (−50.3, 44.5)	97.0 (−13.8, 207.7)	96.3 (42.5, 150.1)
Supporting	39.0 (31.1, 46.9)	76.9 (58.5, 95.4)	142.1 (133.1, 151.0)
Overall	26.5 (21.4, 31.5)	43.2 (31.4, 54.9)	90.9 (85.2, 96.6)

ARI, acute respiratory infections
^aRegression model adjusted for day-of-the-week, holiday effect and seasonality. Positive figures represent an excess, negatives figures represent a decrease in sickness absence rate in the different periods, comparing to the baseline non-epidemic period/
^bEpidemic periods: any two or more consecutive weeks with ≥4 % of the annual number of positive influenza isolation from the virological reference laboratory in the Hong Kong West Cluster [14]
^cContainment period: from May 1, 2009 to June 10, 2009, starting from the date that the WHO issued a global alert till the occurrence of the first untraceable local case of A(H1N1)pdm09 in Hong Kong
^dMitigation period: from June 11, 2009 to December 31, 2009, starting from the occurrence of the first untraceable local case of A(H1N1)pdm09 in Hong Kong through to the end of the study period [15]

ISSN: 1471-2334