The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has stopped attempts to create a final COVID-19 safety standard to protect employees in medical care environments from COVID-19.
On June 21, 2021, OSHA released an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) after identifying that COVID-19 presented a serious risk to healthcare employees. At that time, more or less 500k healthcare employees became infected with COVID-19, and over 1,600 healthcare employees had died because of COVID-19. After releasing the ETS, OSHA got petitions from healthcare industry organizations such as the American Nurses Association, National Nurses United (NNU), and International Association of Fire Chiefs, advocating OSHA to approve a standard to safeguard healthcare employees from COVID-19 and likewise to issue a different standard addressing a wider variety of infectious diseases. OSHA compliance, including these to be approved standards, helps to ensure that these employees work in a safe and healthy environment. workplace
On December 7, 2022, OSHA forwarded a final draft of the COVID-19 rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget. On April 10, 2023, President Biden signed House Joint Resolution 7 into law, which terminated the COVID-19 public health emergency. Since the COVID-19 public health emergency concluded, OSHA thinks that any continuing risk to healthcare employees due to COVID-19 and other coronavirus threats could be best resolved by employing additional rulemaking dealing with infectious diseases more extensively. An infectious diseases standard applicable to healthcare employees is currently being developed.
If OSHA had gone on to develop another COVID-19 standard, it might have taken a great deal of agency personnel time and resources, which could have subdued the launch of a broader safety infection disease standard. OSHA thinks that concentrating its resources on the creation of a standard that offers protection for healthcare employees from a broader selection of infectious diseases will have a bigger impact on the safety and wellness of healthcare employees than spending its resources on various standards for COVID-19 plus other infectious diseases. Therefore, the COVID-19 rulemaking was ended.