Reassess your workspaces - ensure people are seated at least 6 feet away from others, everyone should consistently wear a mask, consider additional filtration systems either in the building or workspace

Try your best to avoid use of shared spaces like lunchrooms, large meeting rooms, conference rooms, locker rooms. 

• Stagger break times

• Encourage online or phone meetings whenever possible

Use schedules that provide more flexibility if possible - teleworking, alternating weeks of “in office” work, stagger schedules

Educate all employees to self-screen for COVID symptoms 

• Symptoms include: New onset cough, New onset shortness of breath, Loss of taste/smell, Sore throat, Fever, Fatigue, Muscle aches, Chills, Runny nose/congestion, Nausea/vomiting, Diarrhea, Headache

Ensure employees have a supervisor to report to immediately if they feel ill or if they’ve had direct exposure to an individual with COVID.

If an employee reports exposure OUTSIDE OF THE WORKPLACE, please do not let them return to work even with a negative rapid/PCR test.  If they’ve been told to quarantine, they should quarantine.  A negative test will not help determine if they will get COVID-19 at a later time.

Encourage your employees to establish with a regular healthcare provider so they have someone to see for care and to arrange for possible COVID testing

While tests are pending, allow for at home work/flexible leave since the highly accurate PCR tests can take 3-5 days for results

Consider having staff quarantine for 10 days after travel

Have flexible leave plans for ill employees so they don’t try to work while sick and infect more of your staff

Keep accurate records - ensure you know who is working same shifts so no one needs to quarantine unnecessarily

If a person tests positive for COVID-19, call us - 410-535-5400, ext 334

We will need to identify all close contacts (defined as being within 6 feet of the person for 15 minutes or longer, consecutively or cumulatively) of the positive person.  This is the most important first step.  We will ask about the 48 hours prior to the person’s symptoms or positive test date.

• We will need names, dates of birth, phone numbers and addresses.  You do not need to gain permission from your employees to provide this information to a Health Department during a pandemic.  

• Please do not disclose the name and information of the positive person to their coworkers.

• If a person is identified as a close contact, that person needs to quarantine for 14 days.

• If that person starts having symptoms, they need to be tested immediately.  

• If that person doesn’t have symptoms, they should complete quarantine fully, without testing as the testing is not reliable in these circumstances.  This is the biggest issue we see with businesses -- a negative test doesn’t release someone from quarantine.

Please clean high touch surface areas routinely with CDC approved cleaning materials

• https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/clean-disinfect/index.html