Passenger movement figures released today by Step Change in Safety and OGUK show a decline in suspected coronavirus cases across the UK’s offshore oil and gas industry.
The data tracks the numbers of workers travelling back from offshore, with four different categories of transport depending on their status.
The dataset released today shows the number of individuals displaying what could potentially be Covid19 symptoms has reduced from 19 in the week starting 3 March 2020 to eight in the week starting 4 May 2020.
As with all other sectors, the oil and gas industry holds no information on whether these cases did turn out to be confirmed COVID 19 and continues to call for expanded testing capability across the workforce as an additional preventive measure to stop the virus reaching offshore platforms.
Commenting, OGUK HSE Director Trevor Stapleton said:
“This apparent reduction is a small move in the right direction, but we can’t stress enough the need to remain alert, to continue to follow protocols and to raise any concerns in both on and offshore working environments.
"OGUK continues to work on a cross industry basis through our Pandemic Steering Group, where our focus remains on increasing testing capacity for our key workers and improving our understanding of how COVID-19 is impacting our sector as we look towards ensuring our industry is able to recover from the significant challenges we are currently faced with.”