CDC Issues Workplace Reopening Guidelines

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued guidelines to help employers decide whether or when to reopen their businesses.

The guidance, drafted as decision trees, was intended for six sectors: schools, workplaces, restaurants and bars, youth programs and camps, child care programs, and mass transit.

The guidelines include a series of questions on reopening to determine whether a business is ready.

For example, it asks:

• Will your reopening be consistent with applicable state and local orders?
• Are you ready to protect employees at higher risk for severe illness?

If the answer to either question is no, do not open.

Reopening Steps

If the answer is yes, the guidelines then direct employers to another series of questions on whether recommended health and safety steps are in place.

These include:

• Promoting healthy hygiene including frequent hand washing
• Having employees wearing face masks
• Encouraging social distancing including through changing layouts, using physical barriers, closing communal spaces, and staggering shifts
• Training employees on health and safety protocols

If the business meets the safeguards, it can reopen.

If not, it should stay closed until implementing the safeguards.

Monitoring

Reopened businesses should also ensure ongoing monitoring is in place, the CDC recommends.

These steps include:

• Having procedures to check employees daily on arrival for signs and symptoms of illness
• Encouraging anyone sick to stay home
• Planning for a sick employee and having flexible sick and leave policies
• Communicating regularly with local authorities and sharing that information with employees
• Consulting with local authorities if there are cases in your facility

CDC Example Controls to Prevent the Spread of COVID-19 in Work Environments

[table “37” not found /]