Temporal Trends of Early COVID-19 Infections in New York City Transit Workers and Residents: March 01, 2020–May 02, 2020

The continuity of public transportation was necessary during the COVID-19 pandemic so that essential workers could report for duty. Therefore, it is important to consider COVID-19’s impact on transit workers themselves. We described COVID-19 incidence rates over time in New York City (NYC) transit workers and the NYC general population during March–May, 2020. NYC transit COVID-19 cases were abstracted from occupational injury and illness logs, and health department data was used to ascertain NYC resident cases. COVID-19 rates among transit workers peaked during the week of March 22–28 (429.8 cases/100,000 workers). The peak in transit workers occurred 1–2 weeks before the general public’s peak (March 29–April 4: 368.8 cases/100,000 people; April 5–11: 357.8 cases/100,000 people). These data suggest that NYC transit workers may have been impacted by COVID-19 earlier than the general public. Thus, improving early detection and response of respiratory disease outbreaks may be vital to protecting transit workers.