(Radio Iowa) – A University of Iowa study finds health care workers are more likely to catch COVID-19 if the exposure occurred in their home rather than their workplace. The study used data from more than 17-hundred health care workers at the U-I Hospitals. Brooks Jackson, dean of the U-I College of Medicine, says workers tend to let down their guard when they leave work. “The workplace was the lowest,” Jackson says, “and that’s not surprising, given that we have hand sanitizer, and we’ve got masks.”

The data showed 26-percent of exposures at home turned into infections, compared to just 10-percent of exposures in the workplace. The study found 17-percent of exposures overall turned into COVID-19 infections. Jackson says it’s clear that -most- workplaces will be safer. “I think when you look at an eight-hour day in the workplace during this time period,” he says, “probably 95-percent of the time, people have been wearing masks.”

The U-I health care workers used in the study all self-reported exposures between September and November of last year.

(reporting by Natalie Krebs, Iowa Public Radio)