Explainer
Infectious exposure
Infection is part of the job — and, in the official 2023–2024 record, COVID-19 still stood out for health-care occupations.
In short
Health workers face everyday exposure to infectious organisms, including bloodborne viruses and respiratory illnesses. During 2023–2024, BLS recorded COVID-19 under a specific nature code, “coronavirus – novel.” Health-care occupations had the highest rates among the groups the news release highlighted.
What the official numbers show
In private industry during 2023–2024, the annualized days-away-from-work rate for coronavirus-novel cases was 5.6 per 10,000 full-time workers. It was 32.4 for healthcare support occupations and 26.7 for healthcare practitioners and technical occupations.
Those occupational rates are about 6 times and 5 times the all-occupation rate, respectively.
BLS also reported that private-industry respiratory illness cases fell 46.1% in 2024, to 54,000 — the lowest number since 2019 — which helped push the overall private-industry case count to its lowest point in the series going back to 2003. A national decline does not mean a given unit is done with infectious risk.
Source: BLS news release USDL-26-0101, January 22, 2026, including Table 3 of that release (coronavirus-novel DAFW rates by selected occupational groups, 2023–2024).