On January 15, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced that it terminated its pursuit of a final COVID-19 standard to protect workers in healthcare settings. The agency cited the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency and the ongoing infectious diseases rulemaking as reasons for halting their efforts.
On June 21, 2021, OSHA issued an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to protect workers from COVID-19 in healthcare settings, which also served as a proposed rule on which OSHA requested comments. The scope of the proposal explicitly stated that it would only apply to settings where any employee provides healthcare services or healthcare support services. The agency received public input on this proposal during multiple comment periods and public hearings from June 2021 through May 2022. AGC, along with its partners from the Construction Industry Safety Coalition (CISC), submitted comments in August 2021 supporting this decision of the agency not to include construction within the scope of the proposed rule.
With yesterday’s announcement, OSHA is now terminating the rulemaking because “the most effective and efficient use of agency resources to protect healthcare workers from occupational exposure to COVID-19, as well as a host of other infectious diseases, is to focus its resources on the completion of an Infectious Diseases rulemaking for healthcare.” Unlike the COVID-19 proposed standard for healthcare settings, OSHA has signaled that construction could potentially be covered under the scope of a final rule issued to address infectious diseases in healthcare settings.
On January 8, AGC and its partners on the Construction Industry Safety Coalition (CISC) met with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to discuss OSHA’s intent to cover construction under their proposed infectious disease standard and urge them to reverse that decision.
For more information, read the termination of rulemaking.
If you have any questions, please contact Kevin Cannon or Nazia Shah.