My name is David Michaels.  I am an epidemiologist and Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Milken Institute School of Public Health of George Washington University.

From 2009 until January 2017, I served as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, the longest serving Assistant Secretary in OSHA's history.  From 1998 to 2001, I was Assistant Secretary for Environment, Safety and Health in the U.S. Department of Energy, charged with protecting the workers, community residents and environment in and around the nation’s nuclear weapons complex.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry’s recommended 16 VAC 25-220, Emergency Temporary Standard/Emergency Regulation, “Infectious Disease Prevention: SARS-CoV-2 Virus That Causes COVID 19.”

I strongly support this effort and commend the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry for this life-saving initiative.

The nation is facing an unprecedented, massive worker safety crisis. As the COVID-19 epidemic grew in strength, millions of workers risked their lives to care for our sick and elderly and help us put food on our tables.  The toll on these workers, and their families and communities, has been enormous. The number of hospital and nursing home workers who have been infected by the COVID-19 virus at work is far larger than 100,000, although, because of inadequate data collection systems, the actual number is unknown. Hundreds have already died as a result of workplace exposures. As the epidemic has grown, tens of thousands of other workers - emergency responders, corrections officers, transit workers, meat and poultry workers, farm workers, and grocery store and warehouse workers – have been sickened. 

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on communities of color: working age African-Americans and Latinx are at greatly increased risk of the COVID-19 disease and death. This is likely associated with employment patterns; workers who have been deemed “essential” workers are disproportionality black and brown, and many are immigrants.  The primary source of COVID-19 exposure for many of these workers is their workplace, where they are not permitted to practice social distancing or given inadequate or no personal protective equipment (PPE). These workers often travel in crowded public or semi-private transportation between their homes and their jobs, and between jobs. Since the virus does not stop at the door of the factory or nursing home or prison or subway car, these workers bring the epidemic into their homes and communities. 

Across the country, businesses are re-opening. Many of the workers who never had the opportunity to shelter in place continue to be exposed to dangerous conditions, and new workers are returning to their jobs.  All these workers need to be protected. If workplace exposures are not controlled, more workers, along with members of their families and communities will be infected, causing more illness and death, and threatening the ability of the nation to resume economic growth.

The mission of the Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA), the worker protection agency I ran for more than seven years under President Barack Obama, is to assure protection of the safety and health of the nation’s workers.  OSHA cannot make workplaces safe; that is the responsibility of employers. By law, employers are required to provide workplaces free of recognized serious hazards. In other words, every worker has the right to a safe workplace, and OSHA’s job is to protect this right by ensuring that employers eliminate hazards that could injure or sicken workers.

Years of research, investigation and OSHA enforcement efforts during disease outbreaks associated with influenza, corona viruses and other airborne pathogens have taught us a great deal about how to prevent workplace transmission of COVID-19. It is clear that until there is a vaccine or we can be confident that persons who are shedding virus are completely stopped from entering workplaces, it will be necessary to apply a series of preventive measures, no single one of which is adequate by itself.  These measures include screening, isolation of infected/likely infected/close-contact workers, physical distancing, respiratory protection and other personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilation, sanitation and disinfection. 

We also know that employers are more likely to implement these controls if they are required to by a government agency which has the enforcement tools to compel those actions.  The success of OSHA’s bloodborne pathogen standard (BBP) is an example of this approach.  The standard was issued in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis; it requires health care employers to develop an infection control plan, properly dispose of needles and other sharp instruments and provide free Hepatitis B vaccinations. The BBP standard has contributed to a dramatic drop in healthcare worker risk for HIV and Hepatitis B and C and played an important role in the nation’s successful response to our Ebola outbreak.

Guidance and recommendations issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other public health agencies are extremely useful in helping employers who are willing to make efforts to control virus spread in their establishments. But this guidance is not legally binding and as we have witnessed in all too many worksites -- from warehouses to meatpacking to fast food restaurants, -- enforceable rules are necessary when dealing with the large numbers of employers who need more prescriptive measures to take the actions required to make their workplaces safe.

The thousands of sick meat and poultry workers, including hundreds in Virginia, are proof that recommendations are not sufficient.

The single most important action the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry could take to help stop this epidemic, save lives and safely open the Virginia economy is to issue an Emergency Temporary Standard requiring employers to develop an infection control plan to prevent workplace COVID-19 transmission.  Enforceable standards are VOSH’s most powerful and effective tool for protecting workers.  Most employers are law-abiding and try to meet requirements issued by government agencies even before inspectors knock on the door, but for those who don’t enforcement of OSHA’s standards has prevented thousands of injuries, illnesses and deaths in industries in all parts of the economy. 

Mandatory standards are the traditional way the government asserts that employers do not get to make this choice: workers must be protected.  Employers understand that they are not required to follow OSHA or CDC recommendations, but most are willing to follow clear legally-enforceable standards.  While the recommendations issued by OSHA and CDC are useful, the tens of thousands of sick workers in health care facilities and meat factories are powerful proof that voluntary recommendations alone are not adequately effective in changing employer behavior.

I commend the Virginia Department of Labor and Industry for moving promptly to adopt and implement 16 VAC 25-220, Emergency Temporary Standard/Emergency Regulation, “Infectious Disease Prevention: SARS-CoV-2 Virus That Causes COVID 19.” 

I have no doubt this step, if taken, will play an important role in helping control the COVD-19 epidemic in Virginia, preventing transmission of this deadly virus in not only workplaces, but also in homes and communities across the state.