What bed is that, then? (part 4)
A closer look at the non-COVID staff absence trend.
In part 3 of this series I indicated that we observe a gradual rise in the number of non-COVID daily staff absences over the period Apr ’20 – Jan ’22 that was hard to eyeball on the slide provided. Here are the data again but with a suitably scaled y-axis to bring out this detail…
Whilst the dashed red line represents one of those ubiquitous ordinary least squares regressions (OLSR) that spreadsheets like Excel kick out I’ve gone and run a Generalised Linear Model over the distinctly non-Normal data. A Tweedie distribution with identity link yielded an overall slope estimate of 17.5 additional absences per day (p<0.001): our staff are getting sicker!
This slope primarily arises because of elevated levels of staff absence during the winter of 2022/21 compared to 2021/20. It is worth pondering on why this is so – a return of some serious influenza strains perhaps? The steady increase from Apr ’21 to Oct ’21 is most interesting and suggests we cannot pin everything on influenza-like seasonal viral out breaks. Contrast the period Apr ’21 to Oct ’21 with Apr ’20 to Oct ’20 and you’ll see what I mean – something different is going on.
Could this be an indication of adverse reaction to the vaccines? If it was solely this then why would we observe a decline in absence from Dec ’20 to Apr ’21? This decline is what we’d expect for seasonal illness, in which case we are left with an enigma.
Kettle on!
I find myself wondering if the most recent absences may be linked to work place stress as the Government’s vax mandate loomed ever nearer and many had held the line on not being vax’d. I’ve read of many staff at the frontline being put under enormous managerial pressure which may have impacted health? Subsequently, the mandate has been lifted with full effect in a week (even though it appears back door methods are now being employed via staff contracts). Just a thought.