Coronavirus: Thread

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Biden doesn't care about COVID, else he'd expose the
US dealings in it, but he does care to create and enforce
more of the Long Tyranny of the State...


Biden Admin Moves To Make Expired COVID Rules For Health Care Workers Permanent

https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-admin-moves-to-make-expired-covid-rules-for-health-care-workers-permanent_4921132.html

In its latest effort to make permanent pandemic-era mandates for
health care workers, the federal agency regulating workplace safety
has submitted a final draft of rules to the White House budget office
for review.
Registered nurse Elle Lauron cares for a COVID-19 patient in the
improvised unit at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in the Mission
Hills neighborhood in Los Angeles, Calif., on July 30, 2021. (Mario
Tama/Getty Images)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which sees
exposure to COVID-19 as a matter of workplace safety, in June 2021
issued a temporary emergency standard for health care facilities that
include requirements around screening, ventilation, physical
distancing, physical barriers, cleaning and disinfection, and masks.

In December 2021, however, OSHA announced that it would stop enforcing
all temporary emergency standard requirements except for a few related
to record keeping, since it was impossible to meet a six-month
deadline to finalize the standard. The agency has since been working
toward a permanent regulatory solution while considering “broader
infectious disease rulemaking.”

On Dec. 9, almost a year after the initial withdrawal, OSHA sent a
final draft to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the
White House Office of Management and Budget for review.

Although details of the final draft have yet to be shared with the
public, an earlier draft required employers to enforce physical
distancing, make sure workers wear masks except when they’re alone,
grant paid leave for vaccination, and provide medical removal
protection for workers who are unable to work due to COVID-19
infection or exposure.

The push for a permanent COVID-19 standard has been met with mixed
reactions, including disappointment from employer groups and cheers
from labor unions.

National Nurses United, the largest nursing union in the United
States, applauded the move, arguing that its members and patients in
their care are still under the threat of “new, more immune-evasive”
variants of COVID-19.

“The COVID-19 pandemic is not over,” the union said in a Dec. 8
statement. “Nurses, other health care workers, and their patients
remain at risk of COVID exposure, infection, illness, and death
because their employers continue to fail to fully protect them.”

The union also laid out a list of specific measures it wants the
permanent standard to include, including screening and testing of
patients, visitors, and workers; isolation of patients with suspected
or confirmed COVID-19; providing personal protective equipment for
workers caring for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19,
contact tracing and notification for COVID-19 exposure; and paid leave
for workers who are exposed to or infected with COVID-19.

“Many nurses continue to experience the devastating impacts of long
COVID,” said Deborah Burger, president of National Nurses United.
“This is why we need a permanent standard and why we must continue to
maintain multiple measures of infection control.”

Meanwhile, health care provider organizations such as the American
Hospital Association (AHA) argued that there’s no need to establish a
permanent COVID-19 standard, since employers have already been
complying with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS)
vaccination mandate and following the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s (CDC) ever-changing guidelines.

“With the constantly evolving, science-based CDC guidance and
recommendations, CMS’ vaccination requirement and existing OSHA
general standards, we strongly believe that an inconsistent and overly
strict OSHA COVID-19 health care standard is not necessary, would
cause confusion and will ultimately lower hospital employees’ morale
and worsen unprecedented personnel shortages in hospitals,” the AHA
said in an April 26 letter to OSHA.

Read more here...