Paid sick leave as disease prevention

With new evidence from home service workers, George Mason University researchers found that paid sick leave can function as a public health intervention.

2026-02-03

(Press-News.org) Home service workers—those who provide care, inspections, or repairs inside private homes—can often lack paid sick leave, making illness a direct financial risk. New research from George Mason University College of Public Health suggests paid sick leave should be understood not only as an employee benefit, but as a preventive health intervention.

In the study led by assistant nursing professor Suyoung Kwon, paid sick leave was linked to lower perceived infection risk, reduced job stress, and higher job satisfaction. During the early months of COVID-19, the research team surveyed more than 1,600 home service workers in South Korea, including home nurses, childcare workers, appliance repair technicians, and gas meter inspectors.

Notably, workers reported that their highest level of stress was not after a confirmed diagnosis of COVID, but during the window when workers are deciding whether to show up sick or stay home.

“Paid sick leave can function much like personal protective equipment or vaccination for workers in high-contact roles,” said Kwon. “It reduces exposure before harm occurs.”

The study was published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Study findings

Workers with paid sick leave reported significantly lower perceived risk of COVID-19 exposure than those with unpaid leave or no leave at all.

Higher perceived risk of infection was associated with greater job stress, which in turn predicted lower job satisfaction. Paid sick leave interrupted that chain.

Workers with no access to sick leave experienced both direct and indirect drops in job satisfaction, suggesting compounded harms when workers lack any safety net.

Why it matters

Many home service workers enter multiple private homes each day. When paid sick leave is available only after a documented diagnosis (like a positive test for COVID-19), workers face a high-stakes choice during their most contagious period: lose income or risk exposing others.

The researchers contend that paid sick leave should be treated as a preventive mechanism that allows workers to stay home when symptoms first appear—before diagnosis or transmission. As policymakers revisit pandemic lessons and prepare for future public health emergencies, this study suggests that expanding paid sick leave is not only a worker protection, but a population-level prevention strategy.

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Did we just see a black hole explode? Physicists at UMass Amherst think so—and it could explain (almost) everything

2026-02-03

AMHERST, Mass. — In 2023, a subatomic particle called a neutrino crashed into Earth with such a high amount of energy that it should have been impossible. In fact, there are no known sources anywhere in the universe capable of producing such energy—100,000 times more than the highest-energy particle ever produced by the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. However, a team of physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently hypothesized that something like this could happen when a special kind of black hole, called a “quasi-extremal primordial black hole,” explodes. In new research published by Physical Review ...

Study highlights stressed faults in potential shale gas region in South Africa

2026-02-03

A swarm of small earthquakes within the Karoo Basin in South Africa has revealed a critically stressed fault that could be perturbed by potential shale gas exploration in the area, according to a new report in Seismological Research Letters. The analysis by Benjamin Whitehead of the University of Cape Town and colleagues concludes that the Karoo microseismicity occurred along a buried fault that may extend through sedimentary layers to the crystalline bedrock, which would increase its vulnerability to stresses produced ...

Human vaginal microbiome is shaped by competition for resources

2026-02-03

The vaginal microbiota is shaped by bacterial access to specific nutritional resources, influencing health outcomes. This study uses a resource-based model supported by clinical data to identify key ecological mechanisms underlying microbiota composition and potential bacterial vaginosis interventions. In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: https://plos.io/4qaZ2kt Article title: Resource landscape shapes the composition and stability of the human vaginal microbiota Author countries: France, United States Funding: Research reported in this publication was supported by the Fondation pour ...

Test strip breakthrough for accessible diagnosis

2026-02-03

A research team led by La Trobe University has developed a single-use test strip which could ultimately change how diseases like cancer are diagnosed. The research, published in the journal Small, used enzymes to boost an electrical signal to detect disease-indicative molecules, also known as microRNAs. The biosensor works in a similar way to glucose test strips but senior researcher Dr Saimon Moraes Silva said it was much more sensitive, detecting microRNAs in blood plasma at ultra-low concentrations ...

George Coukos appointed director of new Ludwig Laboratory for Cell Therapy

2026-02-03

FEBRUARY 2, 2026, NEW YORK – It is with great pleasure that we announce that the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research has established the Ludwig Laboratory for Cell Therapy at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center. The laboratory is directed by former Ludwig Lausanne Director George Coukos, a physician-scientist and global authority on tumor immunology and cellular immunotherapy. Coukos returns to the U.S. following an extraordinarily productive tenure over the past decade as the founding director of the current Lausanne Branch and of the Department of ...

SCAI expert opinion explores ‘wire-free’ angiography-derived physiology for coronary assessment

2026-02-03

WASHINGTON—A new expert opinion from the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions (SCAI) examines the evolving role of angiography-derived physiology (ADP), a wire-free method for coronary physiologic assessment that applies computational modeling or artificial intelligence (AI) to standard coronary angiographic images for the assessment and management of coronary artery disease. Published in JSCAI, “Angiography-Derived Physiology for Coronary Artery Disease Assessment: Expert Opinion from ...

‘Masculinity crisis’: Influencers on social media promote low testosterone to young men, study finds

2026-02-03

Young men are being encouraged to undergo testosterone testing and start hormone therapy through Instagram and TikTok content that promotes unproven health claims while downplaying medical risks, a new international study has found. The study was done at the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Medicine and Health, and led by Emma Grundtvig Gram, a visiting PhD student from the University of Copenhagen. It found that influencer marketing on social media is normalising unnecessary testosterone testing ...

Pensoft and ARPHA integrate Prophy to speed up reviewer discovery across 90+ scholarly journals

2026-02-03

In a new partnership between open-access scholarly publisher Pensoft and the AI-driven reviewer discovery system provider Prophy, the editorial teams at all journals hosted on the publisher’s ARPHA Platform receive access to a broader and more diverse global pool of researchers. The integration connects ARPHA’s editorial and peer review workflows with Prophy’s continuously updated database of millions of active, qualified researchers. As a result, editorial teams across more than 90 open-access peer-reviewed journals powered by ARPHA can now opt to enjoy data-driven reviewer recommendations based on structured analysis ...

Accurately predicting Arctic sea ice in real time

2026-02-03

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2026 — Arctic sea ice has large effects on the global climate. By cooling the planet, Arctic ice impacts ocean circulation, atmospheric patterns, and extreme weather conditions, even outside the Arctic region. However, climate change has led to its rapid decline, and being able to make real-time predictions of sea ice extent (SIE) — the area of water with a minimum concentration of sea ice — has become crucial for monitoring sea ice health. In Chaos, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the United States and the ...

A hearing test for the world’s rarest sea turtle

2026-02-03

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2026 — Kemp’s ridley sea turtles are among the most endangered species of sea turtles in the world. They reside along the east and Gulf coasts of North America, alongside some of the world’s most active shipping lanes. While the threats from fishing, pollution, and vessel collisions are well understood, it is less clear how disruptive human-caused noise is to their survival. In JASA, published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America by AIP Publishing, researchers from Duke University Marine Laboratory, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and North Carolina State University evaluated ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

How rice plants tell head from toe during early growth

Scientists design solar-responsive biochar that accelerates environmental cleanup

Construction of a localized immune niche via supramolecular hydrogel vaccine to elicit durable and enhanced immunity against infectious diseases

Deep learning-based discovery of tetrahydrocarbazoles as broad-spectrum antitumor agents and click-activated strategy for targeted cancer therapy

DHL-11, a novel prieurianin-type limonoid isolated from Munronia henryi, targeting IMPDH2 to inhibit triple-negative breast cancer

Discovery of SARS-CoV-2 PLpro inhibitors and RIPK1 inhibitors with synergistic antiviral efficacy in a mouse COVID-19 model

Neg-entropy is the true drug target for chronic diseases

Oxygen-boosted dual-section microneedle patch for enhanced drug penetration and improved photodynamic and anti-inflammatory therapy in psoriasis

Early TB treatment reduced deaths from sepsis among people with HIV

Palmitoylation of Tfr1 enhances platelet ferroptosis and liver injury in heat stroke

Structure-guided design of picomolar-level macrocyclic TRPC5 channel inhibitors with antidepressant activity

Therapeutic drug monitoring of biologics in inflammatory bowel disease: An evidence-based multidisciplinary guidelines

New global review reveals integrating finance, technology, and governance is key to equitable climate action

New study reveals cyanobacteria may help spread antibiotic resistance in estuarine ecosystems

Around the world, children’s cooperative behaviors and norms converge toward community-specific norms in middle childhood, Boston College researchers report