The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)
recently issued its Interim Enforcement Response Plan for Coronavirus
Disease 2019 (COVID-19), outlining how it plans to
maintain its enforcement duties, and provides employers with
insight on how OSHA will conduct investigation and management of
complaints, referrals and severe illness reports associated with
COVID-19.
Investigations
A significant number of complaints that OSHA has received during
the early stages of the pandemic were in response to insufficient
personal protective equipment (PPE) and employee concerns related
to: (1) lack of training on appropriate standards; and (2) possible
exposure to COVID-19 in the workplace. In this interim enforcement
guidance, OSHA indicated that unless such a report originated in
high-risk or very high-exposure-risk jobs (i.e., medical,
postmortem or laboratory procedures with high potential for
exposure to CARS-CoV-2), it will investigate the complaint
