By Dorothy Atkins

Law360 (October 14, 2020, 9:55 PM EDT) -- House Labor Committee Democrats on Wednesday slammed the U.S. Department of Labor's recent guidance changes that require businesses to report an employee's COVID-19 hospitalization only if the worker is admitted within 24 hours of workplace exposure, saying such a short time frame doesn't "follow the science" and will worsen the pandemic.

In a four-page letter to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia and Occupational Safety and Health Administration official Loren Sweatt, the lawmakers took issue with the federal workplace safety watchdog's new guidance, which OSHA announced Sept. 30.

The new rules say employers only need to report that an employee has been hospitalized with a COVID-19 infection if they were exposed to the virus at work within a 24-hour period. But the Democratic lawmakers noted in their letter that the guidance doesn't track with "science" and how long symptoms take to appear, since the incubation period before symptoms appear is two to 14 days after exposure and hospitalization and death due to COVID-19 can occur even later than that.

"These changes to OSHA guidance will result in almost no workplace COVID-related hospitalizations being reported, because individuals are never hospitalized within 24 hours of being initially exposed to the novel coronavirus," the letter says.

The letter was signed by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, and Rep. Alma Adams, D-N.C., who chairs the subcommittee that oversees wage and hour issues.

The pair also took issue with OSHA changes that further narrowed the window for when employers must report COVID-19 deaths to 30 days, even if businesses learn that a sick or deceased worker contracted the virus while on the job more than 30 days later. This shift in guidance will harm the nation's ability to control the spread of the virus, the lawmakers said.

"As the pandemic continues unabated in this country, this change by OSHA undermines its mission to assure safe and healthful working conditions for workers," the letter says. "By cutting off the employer's duty to notify OSHA regarding workplace outbreaks, the agency will lose the ability to follow up on workplace outbreaks with enforcement or compliance assistance activity."

In light of their concerns, the lawmakers demanded that OSHA provide a detailed description of its justification for making the changes, including any legal analysis that was conducted, the timeline of the changes, who was involved in the decision-making process, and any communications between OSHA and the DOL regarding the changes, among other things.

Representatives for the government and the DOL didn't immediately respond Wednesday to requests for comment.

The agency had previously released guidance on reporting workplace-related COVID-19 hospitalizations and fatalities that didn't specify how soon after a work exposure the incident had to occur to trigger the reporting requirements, but it took that advice down in late July without explanation.

OSHA eventually created its running list of guidance for employers during the pandemic, including requiring businesses to tell the agency about COVID-19 hospitalizations and fatalities.

While the timelines mirror OSHA's standing reporting regulations on workplace illnesses and injuries, the mandate that COVID-19 hospitalizations must occur with a day of workplace exposure to be reportable conflicts with what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said about the amount of time it takes for symptoms of the infection to appear.

The CDC says a person likely won't show symptoms within a day of contracting the disease, because symptoms usually appear between two days and two weeks after someone is exposed.

--Additional reporting by Anne Cullen. Editing by Breda Lund.

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