The Occupational Health and Safety Administration is “working expeditiously” to issue a final COVID-19 healthcare standard, the Labor Department said Thursday. The rule would apply in skilled nursing, assisted living and other healthcare settings.
Until the rule goes into effect, the department reiterated, “employers must continue to comply with their obligations under the general duty clause, the personal protective equipment and respiratory protection standards, as well as other applicable OSHA standards to protect their employees against the hazard of COVID-19 in the workplace,” the department said.
Thursday’s update, released in advance of National Caregivers Day, comes after OSHA withdrew portions of its COVID-19 healthcare emergency temporary standard in December because the agency hadn’t met a deadline to enact a permanent rule.
OSHA had adopted the standard in June, requiring long-term care and other healthcare workplaces to conduct hazard assessments and have written plans in place to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus.
Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Doug Parker told Bloomberg Law that COVID-19 is “the occupational hazard of our time and we’ll continue to treat it like that as long as necessary.” OSHA, he said, is using the emergency temporary standard as the basis for a permanent rule and also will look at how states have implemented workplace safety requirements.
“Federal OSHA will always look to these state agencies who moved first on rules to see what we can borrow from that,” Parker said.
In conjunction with National Caregivers Day, today, the Labor Department is urging healthcare facilities and providers to implement effective safety and health programs of their own amid “soaring injury rates.”
Citing statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, the department said that healthcare workers experienced a 249% increase in injury and illness rates in 2020, based on employer-reported data due to pandemic-related stressors. Healthcare and social assistance workers combined for more injuries and illnesses than any other industry in the nation, data show.
“We recognize our caregivers for the extraordinary sacrifices they continue to make working on the frontline throughout the pandemic to keep us healthy and safe – and we owe it to them to ensure their employers are doing all they can to protect them,” Assistant Parker said in a statement. “The dangers healthcare workers face continue to be of the highest concern, and measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are still needed to protect them.”
