Portable Sanitation Association International

ASSOCIATIONINSIGHT Portable Sanitation Association International News BIWEEKLY EDITION JUNE 10, 2020 Page 4 New OSHA Requirements: Work-Related COVID-19 Cases…continued from page 2 Those reasonable efforts include: • Asking the employee limited questions about how he or she believes COVID-19 was contracted. For example, you might ask something general like, "Are you aware of having been in the presence of anyone else who has tested positive for COVID-19?" If they say, "Um, yes, I found out my next-door neighbor has it too—we were chatting over the back fence just last week," it may be possible to show that the employee did not necessarily contract COVID-19 at work. Unless an employee volunteers specific information, you shouldn't ask specific questions about whether anybody else in the employee's household has COVID-19. This, too, can be seen as an unacceptable invasion of privacy. Sticking to broader, more open-ended questions like, "What is your best guess about where you might have gotten the virus?" is legally safer and likely to give you the best information anyway. On the other hand, you cannot insist that the employee provide you with a list of every person on planet earth with whom they've had closer than six feet of contact for the past 14 days. That would be an invasion of privacy and probably would not be very useful either. Employers should also avoid extensive medical inquiries that violate an employee's right to privacy and the Americans with Disabilities Act or other laws. • Making inquiries about the employee's work and non-work activities, and possible exposure, leading up to the diagnosis. This, again, must be done on a limited, non-invasive basis. So it is probably okay to say, "What can you tell me about contact you've had with people or groups outside of work over the past couple weeks?" If the employee says something like, "Well, we had a birthday party for my son and a few people came over for a socially-distanced barbeque in the back yard. Also, I've started playing softball again," you can use this information to explore whether anybody else on the softball team or at the birthday party is sick. If the employee says, "I don't want to talk about my personal life; it's really none of your business," you cannot force them to talk. You can simply record that you were unable to make a determination on this point because the employee was not forthcoming. • Investigating the employee's work environment to determine whether COVID-19 exposure was possible. This might include considering whether other employees in the work area have tested positive, whether the work areas are crowded and do not allow for social distancing, and whether anyone on any of the job sites the employee services have tested positive. When it comes to communicating about positive COVID-19 tests with customers and job sites, the PSAI's Editable Template-Prevention and Response Plan for Customers template found in the COVID-19 Resource Center can be helpful. Continued on page 21

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