Association between work sick-leave absenteeism and SARS-CoV-2 notifications in the Netherlands during the COVID-19 epidemic.

Background: Alternative data sources for surveillance have gained importance in maintaining coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situational awareness as nationwide testing has drastically decreased. Therefore, we explored whether rates of sick-leave from work are associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) notification trends and at which lag, to indicate the usefulness of sick-leave data for COVID-19 surveillance.

Methods: We explored trends during the COVID-19 epidemic of weekly sick-leave rates and SARS-CoV-2 notification rates from 1 June 2020 to 10 April 2022.