CDC issues new guidance for essential workers exposed to coronavirus

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued new guidelines for essential workers, such as those in the health care and food supply industries. The guidance is focused on when those workers can return to work after having been exposed to the new coronavirus.

Posted 12:04 a.m. Apr 9, 2020 — Updated 1:01 a.m. Apr 9, 2020

WASHINGTON — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has new guidance for essential workers as it takes a small step toward reopening the country.

The guidance applies to essential workers, such as those in the health care and food supply industry, who have been within 6 feet of a person who has a confirmed or suspected case of the new coronavirus.

CDC Director Robert Redfield says employees can return to work as long as they take their temperature before they go to work, wear face mask at all times and practice social distancing while they are at work.

Redfield said the employees should continue to stay home if they are sick.

He also said employers in those critical industries should take the temperatures of workers before allowing them to come back to work.

Redfield announced the new guidance during the daily White House briefing on the U.S. efforts to stop the spread of the virus.

Dos and don'ts for workers:

Do take your temperature before work.
Do wear a face mask at all times.
Do practice social distancing as work duties permit.
Don't stay at work if you become sick.
Don't share headsets or objects used near face.
Don't congregate in the break room or other crowded places.

Dos and don'ts for employers in essential industries:

Do take employees' temperature and assess for symptoms prior to their starting work.
Do increase the frequency of cleaning commonly touched surfaces.
Do increase air exchange in the building.
Do send sick workers home immediately.
Do test the use of face masks to ensure they don't interfere with workflow.

“We want to make sure that we open it as soon as possible, but not so soon that we see a second peak,” U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis said of reopening the economy, which has stalled amid stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns across most of the country.

The North Carolina Republican noted that some other countries where they moved too quickly to reopen the economy have seen the number of COVID-19 rebound.

The CDC's new rules are focused on keeping workers in essential, critical businesses on the job, but Tillis hinted at when it could expand beyond that.

"I would expect, in the coming weeks – days or weeks – that we will start seeing the kind of directional guidance that businesses can use to reopen the non-essential businesses," he said in a telephone town hall meeting Wednesday morning.

Blue Sky Services owner Dave Medvetz is among those business owners waiting for a chance to get back on the job.

Indoor residential work, a quarter of Blue Sky's business, is shut down, Medvetz said. Although his company is considered an essential business, he said people are too afraid to have strangers in their homes during the pandemic.

"Homeowners, regardless of masks and gloves, they are totally not accepting any of that. I would not either," he said. "We had to scale down quite a bit."

Medvetz said a return to normal needs to happen soon to get his workers back on the jobs they were hired to do. On Wednesday, he had a crew working in his backyard just so he could pay them.

"I don’t need it," he said as workers spread rocks outside his house. "These guys here, they are some of my team – they do sheetrock.”

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