Experts: Encourage Employees to Get in Shape to Prevent Severe COVID-19, Injuries

Sarasota, FL (WorkersCompensation.com) – Employers have yet another reason to encourage employees to become healthier: physical inactivity is now identified as a risk factor for severe illness from the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Research has shown that being physically unfit also places employees at greater risk of injury and illness. Seems the pandemic may have spawned a more sedentary population and led to higher injury rates, based on new data that compared pre-COVID statistics from 2019 to those from 2021.

“We’ve seen a tremendous increase in factors that will impact not only the health of the worker but make him more suspectable to injuries, particularly musculoskeletal injuries,” said Thomas Gilliam, president of Industrial Physical Capability Services, Inc. “That timeframe accelerated the loss of strength, the weight gain, the decrease in strength-to-body ratio, [and] more extreme morbid obesity by about 5-fold. So that one year did more damage than what we saw over a period of 15 years.”

During a recent webinar Gilliam and other speakers discussed the toll COVID-19 has and will continue to take on the workforce and actions employers can take to mitigate the effects on their businesses.

Injuries

A recent study of athletes demonstrated the increase in injuries prevalent during the pandemic. The National Football League typically averages 8 Achilles tendon ruptures during each season. There were 10 such injuries in the first 12 days following the 2021 lockdown. There was a 226 percent increase of soft-tissue injuries within the first two weeks of training in 2020 among German football players. And Major League Baseball saw a 30 percent increase in injuries, despite having a shorter season.

Reviews of some 20,000 workers in 2019 and again in 2021 showed a 5 percent decrease in shoulder and knee strength, compared to the average 1 percent; and an increase of three pounds in weight, vs the typical half pound.

“If you have an aging workforce to begin with, which a lot of companies have, we also know that the loss of muscular strength leads to, with the older worker, more slips and falls, for an example.”

Recovering from injuries can take longer for those in worse physical shape. Delayed access to care/rehabilitation, mental/behavioral health and strength/body conditioning are examples of factors that may impede recovery.

“Your general health status really is a factor,” said Scott Cherry, DO, chief Medical Officer for Axiom Medical. “Your physical fitness level is absolutely critical.”

COVID-19

Dealing with and recovering from COVID-19 may also be dependent on a person’s overall health. “Imagine if you’re getting short of breath with just a few steps, then you get COVID and it takes out 30 percent to 60 percent of your respiratory capacity,” Cherry said. “You want to have as much reserve as possible.”

“Those most physically inactive had the greatest rate of being on ventilators, had severe COVID, were in ICUs, and even had a greater risk of dying,” Gilliam added. “If we can become more physically active, particularly in the industrial environment, besides getting stronger the critical thing is to improve and enhance your immune system. Physical inactivity really puts your immune system at a great disadvantage, which increases your risk for COVID.”

Despite the easing of restrictions to prevent transmission of the virus, the speakers believe it will become endemic “a disease or infection level from a virus that’s kept at a low burn rate,” explained Chris Van de Wetering, EVP of New Amsterdam Sciences. “A number of factors, I believe, will ensure it remains in the population.”

The fact that the virus is airborne makes it easily transmissible. Van de Wetering says there will continue to be novel variants emerging. Also, there is insufficient immunity to the virus, as vaccines and previous infection do not seem to last long term. Finally, he notes the societal factors, especially what he called the “haphazard” instituting of public health measures. “If you don’t have uniform implementation you are going to have non-uniform results,” he said. “Also, the biggest factor is pandemic fatigue; people are just tired of it, want to move on with their lives. But going forward we need to be careful just because of the nature of this virus.”

Long COVID

In addition to suffering from the virus itself, many people are dealing with problems after they’ve had COVID-19.

“We’ve thought of COVID as this acute respiratory illness, but then we realized there are a whole host of symptoms that don’t really explain a respiratory illness,” Cherry said. “Now we are looking at it as this multi systemic inflammatory illness.”

Researchers now believe long COVID is a multi system sequala, where different organ systems are involved. An infection in different organ compartments leads to residual inflammation and damage.

“We’ve seen people with the neurological damage – brain fog, migraines,” Van de Wetering said. “One thing that’s really of concern is some people develop a condition called dysautonomia, which is a dysfunction of the autonomic system which controls your breathing, your blood pressure and your heart rate and some of those people end up having abnormally high heart rates or shortness of breath one year on, even though they have no evidence of lung damage.”

The number of cases of long-haul COVID-19 is growing, the speakers said, with about 10 percent to 30 percent of those developing symptoms after the virus has ended for them. Those infected include people who are asymptomatic or have just mild symptoms in addition to those with severe cases. Researchers estimate there are between 8 million and 24 million cases of long-haul COVID just in the U.S.

Education is the Best Defense

Improving a person’s physical fitness is seen as the most effective solution to prevent severe COVID-19, recover from the virus, and prevent and recover from injuries. But implementing programs to do that can be difficult.

“The best thing to do is something ongoing, and the laws make that very difficult to do. You can’t mandate ongoing screenings,” Gilliam said. “I think what industry’s role is is to educate the workforce as to why they want to become more physically active and talk to them about all the benefits … people who are more physically active have a better mental health aspect. In terms of sleep, they sleep better. So there are many benefits to being physically active other than injury prevention.”

Gilliam also said employers can try to make physical fitness part of a benefits package, where employees who achieve certain goals get lower deductibles on their health insurance. Encouraging strength training can be particularly beneficial and can be done at any point in one’s lifetime.

Workers who are doing physically demanding work may be especially at risk for injuries and COVID-19-related issues. “You could almost consider COVID infection or long-haul COVID a potential impairment similar to what you’d find with sleep deprivation, illness, licit and illicit substances,” Cherry said. “COVID is something that is not just in the acute phase for short-term disability or absence, but it can affect productivity and maybe even safety. The big thing in front of us is acute COVID, but we need to be thinking of chronic, long-haul COVID as well.”

Share This Article: