Across all industries 18,263 Covid infections caught at work have been lodged with the HSE under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR) from September 6 2020 to February 6 2021.

The death total across all industries during that second wave period is 172.

During the first wave of the pandemic 202 construction cases and three deaths were reported under RIDDOR from a total of 27,446 workplace infections and 318 fatalities.

HSE guidelines state that “where a worker has been diagnosed as having Covid-19 and there is reasonable evidence to suggest that it was caused by occupational exposure, employers are required to report the case under RIDDOR.”

But the safety body warned that ” the disease notification system suffers wide-spread under-reporting and has the potential to give a distorted view of both the scale and spread of cases.”

HSE added: “Disease reporting also has the additional difficulty of reliably attributing a case of disease to an occupational exposure. This is particularly difficult in the case of Covid-19 where the infection is prevalent in the general community.

“However, given the current priority of Covid-19, HSE is publishing, as management information, details of work-related Covid-19 reports made to the enforcing authorities under RIDDOR.

“This data, while not providing an accurate count of the absolute number of occupational Covid-19 cases in Great Britain, will provide an indicator of the numbers being reported to the enforcing authority and show how this changes over time.”

To access the full HSE data click here.