In another sign of the coronavirus pandemic waning, employers no longer have to temporarily shut down when they notify the state about infected workers four times in a two-week period.
It’s a development state officials are treating with cautious optimism as the faster-spreading delta variant gains a foothold in New Mexico and the rest of the country.
The measure that required a temporary closure if an employer drew four “rapid responses” from the state was removed as part of the governor’s recent order allowing all businesses to operate at 100 percent capacity.
The state does a rapid response after an employer informs it of one or more workers testing positive for the virus. Businesses that were required to shut down usually reopened within a day or two.
Businesses and patrons alike view the governor’s latest order as liberating after 15 months of varying restrictions and lockdowns aimed at combating the virus.
Widespread vaccinations are credited with lowering the state’s outbreak from a roaring crescendo in early winter to a murmur in July. The state Environment Department’s rapid response team dealing with workplace infections has seen those cases plummet, following similar downward trends in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths.
“The number of rapid responses we are conducting has dropped dramatically,” said Sandra Ely, director of the agency’s Environmental Protection Division.
The state logged 56 rapid responses to businesses with infected employees in the previous week, the lowest weekly number since June 2020 and a fraction of the 2,849 rapid responses made in one week during the December peak, Ely said.
Ely noted one rapid response can involve several workers who test positive. The team’s role is consulting with employers on what they must do to contain the virus and ensure workplace safety — and it only becomes an enforcement action if the employer refuses to cooperate.
The team responded 25,219 times in an eight-month period in 2020. During the first six months of this year, the team tallied roughly half that number of responses — 12,727 — with most of them triggered in the winter.
“It’s a much different picture ... than where we were just seven months ago,” Ely said. “We’ve made some real progress on this.”
Although restrictions have been lifted, employers still must notify the agency within four hours of a worker testing positive, she said. The four-hour rule was created late last year to quicken the state’s response to cases cropping up in the workplace.
The agency plans to keep a smaller team in place for at least another year, as health officials worry the delta variant — a more infectious strain — will gain steam during the fall and winter when viruses tend to spread more rapidly. Also, other coronavirus mutations might come into play.
“There are too many unknowns,” Ely said. “I feel New Mexico is in a pretty good place right now. But I think it would be irresponsible for us to think we’re out of the woods.”
The virus has caused the most temporary closures in health care facilities, retail stores, wholesale businesses, education services and restaurants, according to Environment Department data.
There was much confusion and stress during the first months of the pandemic and the state’s rapid response, with no clear guidelines until November, said Carol Wight, CEO of the New Mexico Restaurant Association.
“Everybody was panicking, including the people putting the rules together,” Wight said.
Through much of last year, restaurant owners called the association inquiring what the procedures were when an employee tested positive, Wight said. With no state rules in place yet, she told them to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
And even though most restaurants were running takeout-only service, minimizing the chance of spreading the virus to customers, owners expressed concerns about the intense surge and what it could mean for the industry, she said.
“The concern was how is this spreading, and what can I do to stop it?” Wight said.
Wight said she is happy the state no longer requires restaurants with four rapid responses to suspend operations.
Many in the industry worry if there’s a COVID-19 resurgence in the fall, the state will return to shutting down businesses, Wight said.
“We have to figure out how to do things besides shutting the economy down and putting people out of work,” she said.
Last year, the state used a U.S. Department of Labor grant to form the rapid response team, hiring 26 temporary workers, most of whom had been displaced because of the pandemic.
Through attrition, the team has shrunk to half that size, with most of the departing employees going on to permanent state jobs, said Bob Genoway, director of the state’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau.
Those jobs include the agency’s hazardous waste bureau, state OSHA, the state medical board and the Department of Health, Genoway said.
“These are all good state government jobs that they were able to be promoted to,” he said.
Ely said the agency is exploring new funding sources and foresees the team remaining at about 13 employees. They will be doing other work besides rapid responses, but they will be on hand if outbreaks occur, she said.
She emphasized the team’s role is to consult with affected businesses on how to prevent the virus from spreading. That might include guidance on cleaning, creating safety procedures, contact tracing — to determine who else might have been exposed — and ensuring the infected workers are quarantined properly, she said.
A system was established to allow essential businesses such as grocery stores to remain open, even if several workers were infected, as long as all employees were tested every two weeks, she said. That resulted in 50,000 essential workers being tested regularly, she said.
The vaccine rollouts have not only decreased caseloads but made the virus less transmissible, which has changed how rapid responses are handled, she said.
Before inoculations, whoever came in contact with an infected co-worker had to be quarantined, Ely said. Now, fully vaccinated employees who are exposed can stay on the job if they are asymptomatic.
“It’s a better world now that more people are vaccinated,” Ely said. “We can have more people in the workplace.”
"virus" - Google News
July 11, 2021 at 10:00AM
https://ift.tt/3xzlB78
New Mexico eases shutdown rules on businesses as virus wanes - Santa Fe New Mexican
"virus" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2OagXru
No comments:
Post a Comment