The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has adopted revised policies for enforcing its requirements with respect to COVID-19. The agency is increasing in-person inspections at all types of workplaces to reflect the changing circumstances in which many non-critical businesses have begun to reopen in areas of lower community spread.
OSHA also is revising its previous enforcement policy for recording coronavirus cases. Under its record-keeping requirements, COVID-19 is a recordable illness, and employers are responsible for recording confirmed cases that are work-related (as defined by 29 CFR 1904.5) and involve one or more of the general recording criteria, such as medical treatment beyond first aid or days away from work.
Given the nature of the disease and community spread, however, in many instances it remains difficult to determine whether a COVID-19 illness is work-related, especially when an employee has experienced potential exposure both in and out of the workplace. OSHA’s guidance emphasizes that employers must make reasonable efforts, based on the evidence available, to ascertain whether a particular case of COVID-19 is work-related.
Recording a COVID-19 illness does not mean that the employer has violated any OSHA standard. Following existing regulations, employers with 10 or fewer employees and certain employers in low-hazard industries have no recording obligations; they need only report work-related COVID-19 illnesses that result in a fatality or an employee’s in-patient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye.
Learn more at osha.gov.
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