It had come to my attention how employees throughout the hospitality world were experiencing Covid-19 outbreak in their workplace. It’s a difficult subject because the medical and epidemiology community still don’t understand the virus COVID-19’s every aspect. Frustrating, yes i know, but these things take time.
The Mistakes
Multiple reports and articles have reported that employees were not informed that workers or guests had COVID-19 nor was contact tracing in place to pinpoint the infections. Contact tracing is important because the medical community needs to know where and how quickly the virus is spread so protocols can be put in place to slow the spread. The need for slowing the spread is important until we are able to vaccinate the majority of the country. Some employees have claimed that they are afraid of reporting cases due to suspension or firing.
The actual rules
Human Resources cannot directly tell you who has been tested for COVID-19. HIPAA rules. Fine, but here is what you can be informed of. Human Resources or management should inform you that there was a COVID-19 case at your facility, and that contact tracing systems were in place and have figured out all possible infections. The second thing that employers will address is if you feel sick, or have similar symptoms, even though you may have not tested positive for COVID-19 that you are required to remain at home for a certain amount of days.
Here is a article about OSHA and State rules changing from PEW Trust
What is Contact Tracing?
“Contact tracing will be conducted for close contacts (any individual within 6 feet of an infected person for a total of 15 minutes or more) of laboratory-confirmed or probable COVID-19 patients” CDC website
Probably is the trickist situation we run into, the probability of exactly how quickly we get infected from each other. The guidelines in the simplest form are if you’re inside, you need to be wearing a mask when you’re within 6 feet of someone. It is truly best practice to wear your mask anytime you’re around people inside and out. The vaccine is on its way we just need to be patient.
What YOU can do for the meantime?
Wear a mask. Take showers after you come home from work or a day out. Sanitize often, and wash your hands. Wash your cloth masks. Test your masks. If you can blow out a lighter or candle through your mask, the mask is not COVID-19 safe because the aerosols that come out from when we talk can go through the mask and vice versa. Lastly, be patient, go outside and take mental breaks. We are in this together.
January 28th, 2021
© Clinton St. Clair; Cstclair1@SFSU.mail.edu