Very Important Information from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
Revised Enforcement Guidance for Recording Employee
Cases of COVID-19
An updated memorandum was released yesterday by OSHA. It provides updated interim guidance to Compliance Safety and Health Officers (CSHOs) for enforcing the requirements to the recording of occupational illnesses, specifically cases of COVID-19. This new memorandum will remain in effect until further notice. This guidance is intended to be time-limited to the current COVID-19 public health crisis.
OSHA is exercising its enforcement discretion in order to provide certainty to employers and workers until further notice. OSHA will enforce the record keeping requirements for employee COVID-19 illnesses for all employers according to the guidelines in this memorandum. Recording a COVID-19 illness does not, of itself, mean that the employer has violated any OSHA standard.
Employers with 10 or fewer employees and certain employers in low hazard industries have no recording obligations, however they do need to report work-related COVID-19 illnesses that result in a fatality or an employee’s in-patient hospitalization, amputation, or loss of an eye.
Due to the level of difficulty in determining work-relatedness, OSHA is exercising enforcement discretion to assess employers; efforts in making work-related determinations.
The below memorandum provides considerations for employers to follow in order to comply with this updated guidance.