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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration will hold a public hearing on its emergency temporary standard to protect healthcare workers from COVID-19 exposure at work before it makes the standard permanent, the office said Tuesday morning.
OSHA published the temporary standard last June, but let its non-recordkeeping provisions expire in December. However, the office said at the time it would continue using the standard to evaluate healthcare facilities while working on a permanent rule.
The hearing will be held virtually starting April 27, and could continue for several days. Anyone will be able to provide oral testimony and evidence on issues in the emergency temporary standard, but interested individuals need to let OSHA know they plan to present at the hearing within 14 days. The hearing is informal and is meant to further gather and clarify information, according to the notice.
OSHA is also reopening the standard’s comment period for another 30 days. The comment period was already extended once last summer, and the standard received mixed reviews from stakeholders. The American Hospital Association urged OSHA not to finalize the rule and other healthcare organizations called it unnecessary because they already implemented their own safety precautions. But National Nurses United has pushed for a permanent policy.
OSHA now wants comments on a list of potential changes it could make between the emergency standard and its final iteration, including whether it should align the standard more closely with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations. Some commenters this summer requested more alignment, but CDC recommendations continue to evolve, which could make adding them to a permanent standard difficult.
OSHA also wants feedback on whether to broaden certain requirements cleaning, ventilation and barriers, and whether to include an exception in the rule for employers who are in compliance with CDC guidance. OSHA is considering tailoring requirements to situations or areas where COVID-19 is suspected or confirmed, including provisions around wearing facemasks and cleaning.
Future COVID variants could be genetically different enough to be designated as its own novel coronavirus strain, the notice said. OSHA wants feedback on whether this final standard should apply to all related strains of the virus, and not just COVID-19.
OSHA may also update vaccination provisions in the final rule, including adjusting the required paid time off for employees to get the vaccine to four hours and requiring paid sick leave to recover from side effects. The final rule could also relax restrictions based on workers’ vaccination status, staff vaccination rates or community vaccination rates. In general, the office is considering linking regulatory requirements to local COVID-19 risk and transmission levels.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down OSHA’s vaccination-or-testing requirement earlier this year, and the office is not considering requiring mandatory vaccination for employees covered by the standard, Tuesday notice says. The majority of covered employees are already subject to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ COVID-19 vaccination requirement for healthcare workers. OSHA may limit paid vaccine leave requirements to employers not covered by the CMS mandate.
Finally, OSHA requested facilities submit data related to the delta and omicron variants and employee vaccination to help inform the final standard. The agency wants to know how much money healthcare companies have already spent to comply with the emergency temporary standard and how employers will bear ongoing costs under a final rule.
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