OSHA Releases Revised COVID-19 Guidance

The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released revised guidelines regarding enforcement actions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The former guidelines, “U.S. Department of Labor Adopts Revised Enforcement Policies For Coronavirus,” were released on May 19, 2020.

These new revisions are short, however Compliance Today notes that there are two major changes: increasing in-person inspections as noncritical businesses start to reopen and requiring businesses to treat the coronavirus as a reportable illness during recordkeeping.

“The guidance considers the fact that employers may find it hard to confirm that a case of coronavirus was work related. Existing regulations regarding companies with fewer than ten employees are also still in effect, meaning that those companies have no recording obligations—they need only report fatalities, in-patient hospitalizations, amputation, or the loss of an eye.

The Department of Labor issued a news release explaining the changes and the department’s stance on company obligations under current law:

‘OSHA’s guidance emphasizes that employers must make reasonable efforts, based on the evidence available to the employer, to ascertain whether a particular case of coronavirus is work-related.’”