COVID-19 infection risk in face-to-face meetings in an office

This study estimates the risk of COVID-19 infection in workplaces using the information on the occurrence of face-to-face meetings detected from the location data of employees in the office. The face-to-face meetings, the number of participants, and the duration used in the COVID-19 infection probability model refer to observed data, respectively. The detection of face-to-face meetings is based on the location information obtained from the communication information of the company terminal and Wi-Fi in the specific company, measured by the discrete-collective model. The estimation of the risk of COVID-19 infection is based on simulated data from actual measurements of the spread of droplets. The number of daily meetings detected on 20 floors of the company, from 5F to 24F, is 5,414, and the number of participants is 4,531. Using the transmission probability of the virus assuming normal breathing, we simulate the risk of transmission to other employees in the event of a positive person in the relevant office. We estimate the number of infected persons per day in the omicron strain of COVID-19. We confirm that limiting the number of participants in a meeting and reducing the duration of the meeting are effective measures to mitigate the risk of infection. We also present a quantitative assessment of the infection risk at a workplace.