OPINION: Reporting a worker’s hospitalization within 24 hours of a workplace incident is appropriate for traumatic injuries such as falling off a roof, but it makes no sense for Covid-19. It is generally impossible to identify the precise moment someone i

'Absurd reinterpretation' of OSHA rule about workers and Covid-19 - STAT OSHA is telling employers to report workers hospitalized for Covid-19 only if it happens within 24 hours of workplace exposure to the virus. Patrick Skerrett STAT

Workplace exposures continue to be a major driver of the coronavirus pandemic, something that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) should be on top of. But a reinterpretation of a reporting rule is making that all but impossible.

The workers who take care of our sick and elderly, who keep our families fed and provisioned, and who keep our transportation systems operating do their jobs at great risk of illness and death. Those jobs put them in close contact with other workers and the public, and they are often given inadequate personal protective equipment — or none at all. Many travel to and from work in crowded public or semi-private transportation. Since the virus does not stop at the exit of the factory or nursing home or prison or subway car, these workers bring the epidemic into their homes and communities.

Exposure to the virus has sickened hundreds of thousands of workers and killed many hundreds more. Nursing home operators, for example, reported 365,000 confirmed or suspected infections among their staff and more than 1,000 deaths between May and mid-October. The Food and Environment Reporting Network has compiled reports of more than 70,000 infections and 300 deaths among workers in the food industry. Both sets of statistics are incomplete and clearly underestimate the true toll. Many more workers in other occupations and industries have been made seriously ill by the virus, or have been killed by it, although the true numbers are unknown and only limited efforts are being made to collect more complete and accurate data.

Given the extent of workplace transmission, controlling exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, in the workplace must be a prominent component of our efforts to stem the pandemic. Yet under the direction of Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, OSHA, the primary federal agency with the authority to enforce safe conditions for workers, has come under sustained and justified criticism both for its meager enforcement activities and its refusal to issue an emergency temporary standard requiring employers to take specific steps to protect workers. OSHA has become primarily an advisory agency instead of an enforcement agency, offering voluntary guidance to employers instead of issuing enforceable standards....

Reporting a worker’s hospitalization within 24 hours of a workplace incident is appropriate for traumatic injuries such as falling off a roof, but it makes no sense for Covid-19. It is generally impossible to identify the precise moment someone is exposed to Covid-19. As the country has seen in the case of President Trump, hospitalization for Covid-19 can occur several days after a person first develops symptoms, or even weeks, and symptoms do not appear until days after infection. ...