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pay, and you should only return to work once you meet public health guidance for ending isolation.
If you were exposed but don’t immediately test positive, whether or not you get sent home from work depends on which category you fall into in the state public health department’s isolation and quarantine guidance.
If there’s an outbreak but you weren’t exposed – say, for example, you work in a different building than the people who have Covid – Cal/OSHA’s Covid workplace rules don’t prevent your boss from insisting you work in person, said Monterroza.
During outbreaks, employers are required to offer increased testing.
Do I need a mask at work? Do patrons? Who enforces the masking rules?
Yes, workers must wear masks while working indoors, under a statewide mask mandate that went into effect in mid-December.
There are some exceptions, like for workers who are in a room by themselves, workers with a medical condition that prevents them from wearing a mask, and for when workers are actively eating or drinking.
Employers are responsible for ensuring their employees follow workplace mask rules. If an employer is not enforcing mask rules, workers can file a complaint to Cal/OSHA online or call the agency’s center that handles workers’ questions about Covid-19 at 833-579-0927.
There are other ways for workers to address workplace safety issues, including mask usage. Workers are entitled to band together to raise a labor issue with their employer, said Stephen Knight, executive director of Worksafe, a statewide occupational safety organization.
“Anything you do to raise a labor issue with your employer together with other colleagues at work is protected activity under federal law,” Knight said, adding that it is safer for workers to raise issues collectively than to do so alone.
The statewide mask mandate extends to all indoor public settings, so customers coming into stores or gyms, for example, have to wear masks. Local law enforcement agencies are responsible for enforcing mask rules for customers, Monterroza said.
If I get Covid, do I get additional sick leave?
Probably not.
Individual employers may opt to offer supplemental sick leave for Covid. Some localities require that companies provide supplemental Covid sick leave, said Hannah Sweiss, an attorney who counsels employers on how to comply with workplace Covid rules. The city of Los Angeles, for example, requires large employers to offer extra sick leave.
But there’s currently no statewide requirement that employers offer extra sick leave for Covid.
There was a statewide requirement that companies with more than 25 employees offer as much as 80 hours of supplemental sick leave related to Covid-19, but it expired in September 2021. Legislators and the Newsom administration are currently negotiating over bringing back extra paid sick leave for Covid, with the goal of an agreement in the next several weeks.
Again, if you get Covid from a work-related exposure, your employer is required to send you home, with pay. If your employer provides sick leave beyond the three days required by law, it can require you to use those additional sick days while you quarantine or recover.
However, you can’t be asked to use your three sick days to cover time out after a workplace exposure to Covid. Unless you are already receiving disability or workers’ compensation for the time you’re out after a workplace exposure, your employer is typically on the hook for paying you until you meet public health guidelines to return to work.
If you have to quarantine due to a Covid exposure or case that you’re sure isn’t work related, you can use any existing sick days you have. Beyond that, your employer isn’t required to pay you for that time. However, you may be eligible for other benefits, such as disability insurance.
With omicron spreading rapidly, it isn’t always clear if a worker was exposed to Covid from work or outside of work, said Mitch Steiger, senior legislative advocate with the California Labor Federation. Workers could think they got it off the job when they actually got it on the job, said Steiger, so workers may want to consider the possibility that their exposure was occupational.
Worker advocates are quick to point out that public health guidance telling Covid-positive workers to stay home for five days, while the state only requires employers to give three paid sick days, puts some workers in an impossible situation.
“We are muscling our way through a pandemic without sick leave,” said Knight. “It needs to be changed, and I don’t know what the people can do but call the governor.”
Can I get workers’ compensation if I get Covid at work?
Yes.
Employees who believe they contracted Covid at work should file a workers’ compensation claim, said Monterroza.
Workers’ compensation covers things like medical care, temporary disability payments if you lose wages because of Covid, and permanent disability payments if you don’t recover completely.
Grace Gedye covers California’s economy for CalMatters. Previously, she was an editor at the Washington Monthly.
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Usually the day before symptoms start and the day symptoms appear are when people are the most infectious, said Sanghyuk Shin, director of UC Irvine’s infectious disease science initiative.
That means people can become highly infectious faster with omicron than with the previous variants. For example, if person A is infectious and A infects B, person B can then infect person C quicker with omicron than they may have with delta.
“This creates epidemic dynamics that are really hard to get in front of,” said Andrew Noymer, epidemiologist and professor of public health at UC Irvine. “Because it’s so rapid.”
Here is how fast omicron is moving: It was first identified in late November; in the week ending Dec. 18, the omicron variant was responsible for about 38% of the cases in the U.S., according to the CDC’s variant monitoring system. By the week ending Jan. 15, omicron made up 99.5% of cases.
Experts suggest isolating until testing negative
In late December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shortened the recommended isolation period for a person who tests positive but no longer has symptoms from 10 days to five. Those who were exposed but haven’t tested positive should also quarantine for five days, the agency said.
The CDC said the change was motivated by growing data showing that much of the transmission was occurring earlier “generally in the one to two days prior to onset of symptoms and the two to three days after.”
But this move came with quite a bit of pushback and criticism from some in the public health and medical communities who deemed it too lax, especially because the federal rules don’t require a negative test to leave isolation. California updated its guidance to align with the CDC’s, but the state does ask that people remain isolated until they receive a negative test.
Some research has shown that people can still be contagious after five days of testing positive. A small study from Harvard, for example, took a look at infected NBA players and found that 25% of players infected with omicron were still infectious on day six after their first positive test and 13% were still contagious on day seven. The study has yet to be peer-reviewed.
“Having people who might still be infectious return to work, could of course lead to more people getting infected and additional workers being forced to isolate,” Shin said.
The World Health Organization says people with symptoms should isolate for a minimum of 10 days after the first day of symptoms, plus another three days after their symptoms end. Meanwhile, asymptomatic people should isolate for a minimum of 10 days after a positive test.
While recommendations about isolation and quarantine can be hard to keep up with, the bottom line is that people should test negative before returning to work and gathering with others, regardless of symptoms, Noymer said.
Asymptomatic transmission is a big deal
Asymptomatic transmission does occur and it’s a big reason why the pandemic has been so difficult to control.
“We can tell everyone who feels sick to stay home, but not everyone feels sick,” said Shin.
Experts say the best public health practice is for anyone who tests positive to isolate, regardless of how they feel.
Studies – albeit, many conducted pre-omicron – have shown that a large percentage of Covid-positive people show no symptoms. Research published in December reviewed 95 studies consisting of about 30 million people worldwide. Of those who tested positive, 40% had no symptoms at the time of testing. “The high percentage of asymptomatic infections highlights the potential transmission risk of asymptomatic infections in communities,” the research authors concluded.
Meanwhile, separate studies show that the viral loads of asymptomatic patientswerecomparable to those who had symptoms.
Your risks at work depend on many factors
Trying to calculate the odds that you’ll contract Covid at work is not really possible because there are so many factors to consider, experts say.
Research has shown that wearing masks indoors can substantially cut transmission, and with omicron, a high-quality mask is more important than ever. N95 masks are the gold standard, especially with a variant as contagious as omicron, Noymer said. Cloth masks are much less effective unless they have multiple layers and a nose wire. And it’s essential for masks to fit snugly around the mouth, nose and chin.
“A well-fitting N95 mask should do a pretty good job. But nothing is guaranteed,” he said. “Surgical masks do something, but they’re not great . . . and some masks are just pure theater.”
N95 masks can filter about 95% of particles in the air, according to the CDC. Experts at UC Davis say it is OK to reuse an N95 mask, but they recommend waiting one to two days between uses so that viral particles can die off.
How crowded a room is also plays a big role. If you’re in a busy kitchen or warehouse without many windows, the risk will be greater, Shin said.
Pablo Unzueta for CalMatters Motorists lined up at a COVID-19 testing site at the Long Beach Airport, Tuesday, Jan. 11.
Repeated tests are best
A molecular PCR test is the most sensitive and most likely to capture an infection, but rapid antigen tests are effective tools too, experts say.
Antigen tests are often used for routine screening of people who are not sick. If being used as a precaution for an inperson gathering, for example, Shin says a repeat test could help rule out a false negative – a test the day before and a test the day of an event.
However, given the shortage of rapid tests, this could seem like a luxury. People with symptoms looking to confirm whether they’re infected or not, ideally would seek a PCR test, Shin said. But with a backlog in testing, results are sometimes taking more than three days.
Because of the heightened demand for testing, some California counties have come out with new recommendations. Some have urged residents to only get tested if they have symptoms and others have asked people to first seek tests from their health care provider rather than county-ran testing sites because they are overwhelmed.
In an ideal world with no supply shortages, workers who come in contact with large numbers of people, such as those who work in customer service or in grocery stores, would be able to access testing easily and test repeatedly and routinely, experts say.
That said, routine testing of essential workers should go handin-hand with adequate paid sick leave, Shin said. “I’ve definitely known people who have said they don’t want to get tested because they don’t know what to do if they test positive. They can’t not go to work, they need to pay rent.”
California’s Covid sick leave expired in September and legislators and labor unions are negotiating how to reinstate it.
Workplaces can do a lot to minimize workers’ risk
Shin said there is room for more education of workers on how the virus spreads. For example, if someone is in an office space alone, they might think it is safe to take their mask off, but if that same space is occupied by others throughout the day, then people should keep their masks on because Covid-19 is airborne and infectious respiratory particles can remain in the air for up to three hours.
Improving ventilation helps, too.
“Opening windows seems like a no-brainer, but opening windows reduces risk,” Shin said.
Workplaces should also consider investing in high grade filtration systems or high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters, experts say. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, filters need to be able to remove small air particles in the size range of 0.1 to 1 microns to help remove viruses.
Ana B. Ibarra is a Sacramento-based health reporter. She joined CalMatters in 2020 after four years at Kaiser Health News, where she covered California health care and policy.
Blinkin
From Page One
to Ukraine last year than in any previous year, Blinken said. Almost 200,000 pounds (91 metric tons) of aid, including “ammunition for the front line defenders of Ukraine” arrived on Friday, according to the U.S. embassy in Kyiv.
Russia is continuing a military buildup, sending troops and armor to within a few miles of the Ukrainian border in neighboring Belarus for joint military drills that start Feb. 10. Russia denies that it’s planning a further invasion into Ukraine.
Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held inconclusive talks in Geneva last week that failed to resolve the standoff over Ukraine. Blinken earlier visited his Ukrainian counterpart in Kyiv and held talks in Berlin with U.K., German and French allies. The U.S. this week plans to present written responses to Russia addressing its concerns.
The Foreign Ministry in Moscow on Sunday dismissed the U.K.’s allegation of a Russian plan to install a friendly regime in Ukraine as “nonsense.”
“We have rallied allies and partners around the world,” Blinken said on NBC. “We are preparing massive consequences for Russia if it invades Ukraine again."
Some U.S. lawmakers joined Ukraine in calling for response now.
Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, said President Joe Biden’s administration has pursued “a doctrine of appeasement” against Russia.
Russia
From Page One
military buildup along the Ukrainian border and discussed the range of options for the U.S. and its allies, a White House official said.
Last week, the U.S. said Russian actors were preparing potential sabotage operations against their own forces and fabricating provocations on social media to justify an invasion into Ukraine.
U.S. military aid started arriving in Ukraine on Friday “in the face of growing Russian aggression,” the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said on Twitter. The U.K. is also sending supplies.
Russia has assembled a large armed force on its border with Ukraine and sent troops and armor to Belarus, to Ukraine’s north, for joint military drills scheduled to begin Feb. 10.
A meeting in Geneva led by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov didn’t yield an agreement. Aides to Ukrainian, Russian, German and French leaders will probably meet in Paris for talks on Jan. 26.
The four former Ukrainian officials named by the U.K. are Serhiy Arbuzov, Mykola Azarov, Andriy Kluyev and Volodymyr Sivkovych.
Azarov was prime minister from 2010 to 2014, Arbuzov is a former first deputy prime minister, and Kluyev is a former chief of staff.
All three were allies of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
