The Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board adopted revisions to the COVID-19 Prevention Emergency Temporary Standards to reflect the state’s latest COVID-19 public health guidance. The main changes are related to face covering wearing and physical distancing.

Tests and Quarantine:

• Tests and quarantine.- Fully vaccinated employees without symptoms do not need to be tested or quarantined after close contacts with COVID-19 cases unless they have symptoms.
• Testing.- Employers must offer testing at no cost to vaccinated employees with symptoms, symptomatic unvaccinated employees, unvaccinated employees after an exposure or in an outbreak.

Face covering:

• Outdoors.- No face covering is required outdoors (except during outbreaks), regardless of vaccination status, but employers must train workers on CDPH recommendations for outdoor use of face coverings.
• Indoors.- Fully vaccinated employees are not required to wear face coverings indoors, but must document their vaccination status. There are some exceptions. 
• Outbreaks.– In outbreaks, all employees must wear face coverings indoors and outdoors when six-feet physical distancing cannot be maintained, regardless of vaccination status.
• Employers may not retaliate.- Employees are allowed to wear face coverings with no fear of retaliation.
• Respirators.– Unvaccinated employees may request respirators for voluntary use and they employers must provide them for free.

Physical distancing:

• Physical distancing and barrier requirements.- No physical distancing needed regardless of employee vaccination.
• Exceptions.- There are exceptions related to outbreaks.
• Exceptions.- Also, employees can determine that physical distancing is necessary in their workplace in some circunstantes.

Ventilation systems:

• Employers must evaluate ventilation systems to maximize outdoor air and increase filtrations efficiency, and evaluate the use of additional air cleaning systems.

If you are an employer, you should be aware of all the changes to the ETS, this is why we recommend you to take our two courses specific for Businesses in our Extraleap partner site. These two courses are fully online and you can do them at your own pace.

Extraleap is the site where you and your team can find online compliance trainings. We offer a wide variety of courses in safety and HR management.