– Respond by December 9. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) seeks comments on their request to extend requirements for collecting information specified in OSHA’s COVID-19 Recordkeeping and Reporting in Healthcare Standard, which applies to settings where any employee provides healthcare services. The requirements include establishing and maintaining a log of each instance identified by the employer that an employee is COVID-19 positive; making the individual log entry available upon request for examination and copying; and reporting to OSHA each work-related COVID-19 fatality and each work-related COVID-19 in-patient hospitalization within specific timeframes of the employer learning of them. OSHA would like to hear from the public:
- whether the information collection requirements are necessary for the proper performance of the agency’s function to protect workers;
- if OSHA’s estimate of the burden (time and costs) of collecting the information is accurate; and
- what are some ways to minimize the burden on employers who must comply.
OSHA will summarize responses when they submit their request to the Office of Management and Budget to extend the requirements.