On Sunday, May 3, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated their Frequently Asked Questions for General Business and released guidance for Symptom-Based Strategy to Discontinue Isolation for Persons with COVID-19. The new guidance is targeted at assisting employers as they try to navigate the landscape of reopening businesses during the COVID-19 outbreak.

When returning individuals to work, the employer should take proactive measures to prevent the spread of the virus in the workplace, including limiting social interaction, requiring social distancing, encouraging (or mandating) employees wear face coverings under certain circumstances and cleaning/disinfecting more regularly. More about those safeguards can be found here in our prior blog post. The CDC also states that screening employees is an optional strategy that employers may use to prevent the spread of the virus. Screening employees may not be feasible for all employers. However, if an employer does chose to screen employees returning to work, the employer should take steps to protect both the individual being screened and the individual performing the screening. Also, employers should take steps to ensure that any records generated from screenings are treated with confidentiality.

The FAQ also provides several suggestions for how employers should handle an employee who has been diagnosed with COVID-19, shows symptoms of COVID-19 or has been exposed to COVID-19. In general, in circumstances where an employee has been diagnosed, showing symptoms or exposed to COVID-19, the CDC recommends, among other things, that the individual be self-isolated. The CDC then provides specific metrics for returning to work those individuals who have been isolated through their guidance in the Symptom-Based Strategy to Discontinue Isolation for Persons with COVID-19. The CDC clarifies that employers should not require a doctor’s note to return to work.

In sum, the guidance provides employers various suggestions to think through in determining a plan for how they will return individuals to the workplace, including steps they will take to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at worksites and how they will handle individuals who have been ill or exposed to someone with COVID-19. Employers should consider creating policies or forms to streamline this process so that return-to-work decisions are handled as uniformly and objectively as possible.

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