President Joe Biden’s executive order directing OSHA to consider a national emergency temporary standard for COVID-19 in the workplace could finally provide contractors with a national playbook for fighting COVID-19 on jobsites, while standardizing the reporting and tracking of people exposed to the virus at work.
The order, issued Thursday, directs OSHA to issue updated, national guidance on workplace safety for COVID-19 within two weeks. But it also directed the agency to revisit issuing an emergency temporary standard to keep workers safe from COVID-19, including whether masks should be worn at work, a step OSHA declined to take under the Trump administration.
