Non-healthcare employers in California can now operate under reduced COVID-19 outbreak regulations thanks to new guidance from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH).
The CDPH updated its guidance on June 20, 2023, changing the timeframe for counting COVID-19 cases that make up an outbreak. The timeframe was 14 days and it is now down to seven days for non-healthcare employers.
This change also impacts the definition of an outbreak under Cal/OSHA’s non-emergency COVID-19 standard, according to law firm Seyfarth Shaw. Employers “need only implement the more stringent outbreak provisions of the COVID-19 standard if there have been at least three COVID-19 cases within an exposed group during a seven-day period.”
Change ‘based on shortened incubation period of recent variants’
Cal/OSHA’s regulations previously required “outbreak protocols when there were three or more COVID-19 cases within an exposed group who visited the workplace during their infectious period at any time during a 14-day period.”
However, the state agency’s regulations were written to automatically update to reflect CDPH outbreak changes. That means the new CDPH guidance directly impacts the Cal/OSHA protocols.
CDPH said the change is “based on the shortened disease incubation period with more recent SARS-CoV-2 variants.”
Seyfarth Shaw stated that this change will make it “much easier for employers to avoid hitting outbreak status, and triggering the accompanying restrictions.”
14-day period for getting out of outbreak status still applies
However, the law firm said that employers will still need to look at a 14-day period for getting out of the outbreak status. This is because a Cal/OSHA regulation requiring one or fewer COVID-19 cases detected in the exposed group for that period of time still applies.
Further, Cal/OSHA’s major outbreak provisions, which require more mitigation controls when triggered by 20 or more employee COVID-19 cases in the exposed group within a 30-day period, remain unchanged from the 14-day window. That’s because they’re not tied to the CDPH changes.
While COVID-19 has become much less of a problem than it was during the pandemic, occasional outbreaks do still occur. This change should help blunt some of the impact for California employers, according to Seyfarth Shaw.
