TY - JOUR T1 - Deprivation and exposure to public activities during the COVID-19 pandemic in England and Wales JF - Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health JO - J Epidemiol Community Health SP - 319 LP - 326 DO - 10.1136/jech-2021-217076 VL - 76 IS - 4 AU - Sarah Beale AU - Isobel Braithwaite AU - Annalan MD Navaratnam AU - Pia Hardelid AU - Alison Rodger AU - Anna Aryee AU - Thomas E Byrne AU - Erica Wing Lam Fong AU - Ellen Fragaszy AU - Cyril Geismar AU - Jana Kovar AU - Vincent Nguyen AU - Parth Patel AU - Madhumita Shrotri AU - Robert Aldridge AU - Andrew Hayward A2 - , Y1 - 2022/04/01 UR - http://jech.bmj.com/content/76/4/319.abstract N2 - Background Differential exposure to public activities may contribute to stark deprivation-related inequalities in SARS-CoV-2 infection and outcomes but has not been directly investigated. We set out to investigate whether participants in Virus Watch—a large community cohort study based in England and Wales—reported differential exposure to public activities and non-household contacts during the autumn–winter phase of the COVID-19 pandemic according to postcode-level socioeconomic deprivation.Methods Participants (n=20 120–25 228 across surveys) reported their daily activities during 3 weekly periods in late November 2020, late December 2020 and mid-February 2021. Deprivation was quantified based on participants’ residential postcode using English or Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation quintiles. We used Poisson mixed-effect models with robust standard errors to estimate the relationship between deprivation and risk of exposure to public activities during each survey period.Results Relative to participants in the least deprived areas, participants in the most deprived areas exhibited elevated risk of exposure to vehicle sharing (adjusted risk ratio (aRR) range across time points: 1.73–8.52), public transport (aRR: 3.13–5.73), work or education outside of the household (aRR: 1.09–1.21), essential shops (aRR: 1.09–1.13) and non-household contacts (aRR: 1.15–1.19) across multiple survey periods.Conclusion Differential exposure to essential public activities—such as attending workplaces and visiting essential shops—is likely to contribute to inequalities in infection risk and outcomes. Public health interventions to reduce exposure during essential activities and financial and practical support to enable low-paid workers to stay at home during periods of intense transmission may reduce COVID-related inequalities.No data are available. We aim to share aggregate data from this project on our website and via a "Findings so far" section on our website - https://ucl-virus-watch.net/ . We will also be sharing individual record level data with personal identifiers removed on a research data sharing service such as the Office of National Statistics Secure Research Service. In sharing the data we will work within the principles set out in the UKRI Guidance on best practice in the management of research data. Access to use of the data whilst research is being conducted will be managed by the Chief Investigators (ACH and RWA) in accordance with the principles set out in the UKRI guidance on best practice in the management of research data. It is the intention that the data arising from this research will initially be collected, cleaned and validated by the UCL research team and once this has been completed will be shared for wider use. We aim to make subsets of the data more rapidly available both on our study website and via the public facing dashboard during the ongoing phase of data collection. In line with Principle 5 of the UKRI guidance on best practice in the management of research data, we plan to release data in batches as they become available or as updated results are published. Individual record data linked using NHS Digital will not be shared, only aggregated results. HES and mortality data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. These data are owned by a third party and can be accessed by researchers applying to the Health and Social Care Information Centre for England. We will put analysis code on publicly available repositories to enable their reuse. ER -