Occupational health in the framework of the COVID-19 pandemic: a scoping review

To collect the available evidence related to occupational health in the face of the introduction of the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic.

Scoping review developed from the Arksey and O'Malley framework. The search was performed in the databases PubMed, Academic Search Complete, Science Direct, Medline, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar. Documents on COVID-19 and its relationship with occupational health published in English, Portuguese and Spanish were included. The review, selection and characterization of the studies was carried out by five reviewers.

The search and selection identified 43 documents published between December 2019 and April 2020. The topics covered include occupational exposure, protection measures, psychosocial affectations of workers, particularly health, as well as conditions of work organization that can influence contagion.

Health workers are the most exposed workforce. Accompaniment, coaching and training in relation to patient care and the use of personal protection equipment are essential to reduce contagion among health personnel. In other work activities, social distancing is the standard measure for the mitigation of transmission, as well as the continuous disinfection of workplaces.