Written by Hall Benefits Law on February 18, 2025
OSHA originally issued an Emergency Temporary Standard on June 21, 2021. The purpose of the standard was to protect workers in healthcare settings from COVID-19. The agency published the Emergency Temporary Standard as a proposed rule, soliciting comments from stakeholders and other members of the public. OSHA also held public hearings on the issue from June 2021 to May 2022.
OSHA submitted a draft final COVID-19 rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on December 7, 2022. However, on April 10, 2023, President Biden signed House Joint Resolution 7 into law, which terminated the federal government’s national emergency declaration in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In its statement, OSHA reasoned that it chose to terminate the COVID-19 healthcare rulemaking in favor of pursuing generalized Infectious Diseases rulemaking for healthcare. The agency explained that focusing on mitigating workers’ exposure to occupational exposure to all infectious diseases in the healthcare setting was a better use of its resources than solely gearing the rule toward COVID-19.
With today’s announcement, OSHA is now terminating the rulemaking because the most effective and efficient use of agency resources to protect healthcare workers from occupational exposure to COVID-19, as well as a host of other infectious diseases, is to focus its resources on the completion of an Infectious Diseases rulemaking for healthcare.
