Labor, health and vulnerability in the COVID-19 pandemic

This essay discusses the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on the relation between labor and health, from the perspective of the workers' risk and vulnerability. The pandemic has represented a humanitarian crisis, since both the disease and the measures to contain it lead to persistent socioeconomic effects. In this context, the labor category has an important role, either because of the feasibility of maintaining the social distancing and living conditions allowed by the employment relationship, or because of the impossibility of adopting protection strategies due to job insecurity. The essay was initially built on the basis of a literature review on the interface between COVID-19 and workers' health, carried out from December 2019 to April 2020, on the PubMed, BIREME, Cochrane Library, medRxiv and LitCovid bases, as well as using gray literature. Health professionals are more affected, but they also have greater access to diagnosis; however, data are still scarce on other professional categories, as well as on the social determinants that lead to greater labor-related vulnerability. In Brazil, the pandemic coincides with a situation in which workers accumulate significant losses of labor and social security rights, in addition to pre-existing social inequalities, such as precarious housing, with greater exposure and risk. Although the pandemic is still evolving, social inequalities are expected to intensify, with the deep retraction of the economy, and workers must be a priority target of attention in the control and spread of the disease, in addition to being the axis for planning public social and health protection policies.