As promised, after the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health’s (Cal/OSHA) COVID-19 Prevention Emergency Temporary Standards (ETS) went into effect on May 6, 2022, Cal/OSHA issued updated frequently asked questions (FAQs) and a fact sheet covering the recent revisions. These FAQs provide additional guidance on some of the revisions to the ETS which are discussed in our prior alert.  The most significant FAQs are summarized below:

• The FAQs reiterate that the term “fully vaccinated” is no longer used in the ETS.  Many of the protections of the ETS apply regardless of vaccination status and some requirements do not change based on whether an employee is fully vaccinated or not. The FAQs indicate that employers may still request employee vaccination status, a strategy that we would recommend that employers continue to implement because the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) return to work requirements still consider an employee’s vaccination status.
• The FAQs also reiterate that the ETS’s required quarantine and workplace exclusion periods for employees with COVID-19 “are the same as CDPH’s recommended isolation periods for positive COVID-19 cases.” “For employees who had a close contact, employers must review CPDH guidance and implement quarantine and other measures to prevent COVID-19 transmission in the workplace.” The FAQs’ include the CDPH’s current exclusion requirements for employees who test positive for COVID-19 as well as CDPH quarantine guidance for close contacts.
• The FAQs further clarify that COVID-19 tests have been simplified to make it easier to use self-administered and self-read tests for return-to-work purposes. A video or observation of the entire test process is no longer necessary; a date- and time-stamped photograph verifying the test result will now be sufficient.

Unlike prior FAQs which provided some detail and guidance which was not included in the ETS, these FAQs provide some clarification but operate more to reiterate the new requirements already found in the ETS. Nonetheless, employers should review the FAQs and recent revisions to the ETS to ensure they are compliant with all the recent revisions.