At its June 3, 2021 Board Meeting, the California Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Standards Board formed a 3-person Sub-Committee to work with staff from the Division of Occupational Safety and Health to recommend further amendments to the Cal/OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) for COVID-19 Prevention. The Sub-committee met today, June 21st, and spoke about the meeting structure and how they would accomplish the Subcommittee's business in the allotted 2 hours for each meeting.

Going forward, the Sub-committee will formulate topics to be focused on during each meeting, and the public comment period will be restricted to 30 minutes. It was stated that while the ETS is in place, the Sub-committee will meet twice per month. The next Sub-committee meeting is scheduled to occur on July 13th, and on that agenda you will likely see one or more of the following focus areas:

Metrics/Data

Benchmarking California against other states

  • How are other states addressing COVID-19
  • How do other states deal with issues that are coming up

Metrics for effective success / more transparency with data

  • Using data to determine when COVID -19 rules are tightened or loosened
  • Basing restrictions on more accurate data from the California Department of Public Health for outbreaks

Vaccine verifications

  • Various methods for verification
  • Stakeholder concerns

State of Cal/OSHA complaints and inspections

  • What types of complaints are coming in from the community
  • Are there more complaints as the rules are loosened
  • What is being identified during inspections

Additional Discussions

  • Implications of rolling the ETS into the current injury and illness prevention requirements
  • Possibilities of expanding the aerosol transmissible diseases standard to incorporate a broader scope of infectious diseases
  • Strengths and weaknesses of creating a stand-alone infectious disease standard

PRISM will continue to monitor the OSH Standards Board and ETS Sub-committee to keep members informed of regulatory changes. Additionally, ETS revisions will be discussed at PRISM's June 22nd Risk Control Open Forum, which will include guest speakers Patricia Eyres, Managing Partner with the Eyres Law Group, and Patrick Corcoran, Senior Safety Engineer with Cal/OSHA. For questions about this blog or PRISM's monitoring of COVID-19 regulations, please contact PRISM Risk Control.