By Ruth Kiefer, MSc, ARM, Vice President of Loss Control

As you know an outbreak at your facility can be devastating not only to your staff morale but to your production line as well. This puts you in a pinch and scrambling for staff to complete your orders for 14 days while they are quarantining. As of December 8, 2020 the CDC has put forth new guidelines for quarantining. So here is the bottom line… those who have had close contact still need to quarantine and the local health department will determine the length of time, but this time could be significantly reduced.

First, what is considered Close Contact. Close contact is an employee that has had contact with someone who has been within 6-feet of someone with COVID-19 for a total of 15-minutes or more. If your employee provided care at home for someone who was sick (wife, husband, or children), they hugged or kissed someone with COVID-19, or if they shared eating or drinking utensils. The other is if someone coughed or sneezed on you. If your employees ride-share and are not of the same family, it is imperative that they wear masks while traveling together.

Second, the options now for manufacturers is the reduced Quarantine option. Once you have cases at work, you should be contacting your local health department, and remember, they do have the final say in the length of time be it 14, 10 or 7 days. Options they will consider are employees that may return to work after 10 days with out a COVID-19 test, or they may return on day 7 after getting a NEGATIVE test that was taken on day 5 of their quarantine. Sound confusing, it is. These measures were adopted from the critical worker quarantining protocols and they seemed to have worked for them and now they are allowing others to follow the same guidance. If you still have questions, please by all means contact your loss control consultant and we will walk you through the process.

In the meantime, we do know and have seen it first hand with our manufacturers, if you social distance and wear the masks, your chances of having an outbreak are significantly less than those who are letting it fall to the way side. I know we are all tired of this, but we are almost there, so please continue to social distance and wear the face coverings and we will get through this.