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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 116 / Monday, June 21, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
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employees are required to report to OSHA each work-related COVID19
fatality and in-patient hospitalization as required by paragraph r of this section.
Paragraph c6 requires employers to monitor each workplace to ensure the ongoing effectiveness of the COVID19
plan and update it as needed.
Employers may also revise an original plan and implement an updated plan due to the evolving nature of the COVID
public health emergency. Paragraph q2i requires covered employers to retain all versions of the COVID19
plans implemented to comply with this ETS while the ETS remains in effect. As discussed in more detail below, the retention of the finalized, implemented COVID19 plans not drafts will aid employers, employees, and employee representatives in several ways, including assisting with the evaluation of the efficacy of policies and procedures employers have taken iteratively in response to changing circumstances. As discussed above, paragraph c requires employers with more than 10 employees to develop, implement, and update a written COVID19 plan for each workplace.
Since paragraph c requires employers to update their written COVID19 plan as needed, paragraph q2i requires employers to retain all versions of the plan while this ETS is in effect.
One of the main purposes for the retention requirement is to provide employees, former employees, and their representatives with access to the written plan. As discussed below, paragraph q3i requires employers to provide access to employees and employee representatives to all versions of the written COVID19 plan.139 OSHA
believes that access to the plan will not only inform employees about the contents of the document, but will also lead to increased employee involvement in the development and updating of the plan. In addition, OSHA believes retention of all versions of the plan will ultimately assist employers in the prevention of COVID19 exposure in their workplaces. Retention of all versions of the plan will enable 139 Consistent with 29 CFR part 1904.35a3, OSHA interprets the term employee as used in paragraph q3iiii to include former employees. In accordance with this interpretation, OSHA also interprets the phrases their personal representatives and their authorized representatives, as used in paragraph q3i and q3iii, to include the personal and authorized representatives of former employees. These interpretations are limited to these provisions. Note, as discussed in more detail below, that for former employees and their representatives, the requirement to provide access to the written COVID19 plan under paragraph q3i is limited to the versions of the plan that were implemented during the former employees employment.

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employers to better evaluate the effectiveness of policies and procedures they have taken to limit exposure to COVID19 and will ensure that employees and their representatives can provide meaningful contributions to the review and improvement of the COVID
19 plan. Additionally, making all versions of the plan available to OSHA
as required by paragraph q3iv will allow the agency to verify the effectiveness of employee protections.
Under paragraph q2ii, employers with more than 10 employees on the effective date of this section are required to establish and maintain a COVID19
log and record each instance identified by the employer in which an employee is COVID19-positive, meaning that person has a confirmed positive test for, or has been diagnosed by a licensed healthcare provider with, COVID19, regardless of whether the instance is connected to exposure to COVID19 at work. However, the COVID19 log should not record incidences for employees who work exclusively from home and thus could not expose others in the workplace. As explained in a Note to paragraph q2ii, the COVID
19 log is intended to assist employers with tracking and evaluating instances of employees who are COVID19positive without regard to whether those employees were infected at work. While the workplace is immediately impacted by having a COVID19-positive employee because of the potential exposure to others, it can often be difficult to determine quickly whether that employee was infected at work or elsewhere, so OSHA has relieved employers of the burden of trying to make that determination for the COVID
19 log. Because of the need to quickly identify and track potential workplace exposure trends and inform others in the workplace about potential exposures, as well as implement other requirements of the standard i.e., medical removal from the workplace, it is more urgent to record an instance where an employee is COVID19positive and the details surrounding that instance than to wait to determine whether the instance was work-related.
OSHA believes that the requirement to establish and maintain a COVID19 log will ultimately assist employers in preventing workplace transmission, even when cases arise that do not originate in the work environment.
Paragraph q2iiA provides that the COVID19 log must contain, for each instance, the employees name, one form of contact information e.g., phone number or email address, occupation, location where the employee worked, the date of the employees last day at the
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workplace, the date of the positive test for, or diagnosis of, COVID19, and the date the employee first had one or more COVID19 symptoms, if any were experienced. When making entries on the COVID19 log, employers should only enter the specific information required to be entered. The recording of additional information not required to be entered may result in privacy concerns for the employee who is the subject of the entry.
The main purpose of the COVID19
log is to assist employers in tracking whether there is a COVID19 outbreak at the worksite. Information about specific occupations and locations where employees have worked can be used to pinpoint where exposure has occurred. For example, if the occupation of the infected employee is healthcare assistant, the location is floors 3
through 5, and those floors consist mainly of patient examination and hospital rooms, the employer may be able to conclude that the employee had spent time working with other health care providers in rooms on those floors and may be able to determine what times exposures in each place would have occurred based on other patient and provider records.
Also, entering information on the COVID19 log about an employee with non-work-related COVID19 illness assists an employer in tracking how and when the disease entered the workplace.
By entering information about all employee cases of COVID19, the time needed by employers to make workrelatedness determinations is eliminated, and thus results in information being entered on the COVID19 log in a timely manner. In addition, the information entered on the log may assist an employer in determining whether the employers policies and procedures have been effective in the prevention of COVID19
in their workplace.
Additionally, paragraph q2iiB
requires employers to make entries on the COVID19 log within 24 hours of learning that an employee is COVID19positive. The 24-hour timeframe ensures that information about an employees confirmed or diagnosed illness is timely entered on the COVID19 log. At some worksites, timely information entered on the COVID19 log may assist employees and their representatives, who have a right of access to certain information on the log, in preventing the spread of the disease throughout a facility. Specifically, the timely entry of COVID19 illness information on the log may assist employee representatives in identifying exposure trends in different areas of a workplace.

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