Employers must, in consultation with workers and/or their HSRs, regularly review the effectiveness of controls in place and update if necessary.
Increased workplace controls will be required that ensure that sick workers do not go to work:
- anyone with even a mild cough or fever MUST stay at home (i.e. not enter the workplace)
Consider developing guidelines to control entry to the workplace, ie: restricting entry and/or access of persons who show symptoms similar to COVID-19 or who have a relatively high risk of exposure to it (eg: recent travel to high-risk region).
Based on medical advice, employers and workers must comply with exclusion periods for workers who are exposed to COVID-19, show symptoms, are ill or have returned from travel to COVID-19-affected areas.
Consider workers who may need to be reassigned to priority tasks that are unfamiliar to them. These workers may be particularly susceptible to injury while adjusting to the new work, particularly psychological injury and body stressing injury (eg: fatigue; anxiety; sprain/strains; occupational overuse injury; etc). Control measures for these risks could include:
- close supervision and support, monitoring workloads and job demands
- specific training
- adapting work arrangements (eg: work from home; staggered work shifts, etc)
- clear (adapted) performance expectations.
Employers and workers must comply with public health advice and any emergency measures issued by health authorities.
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