


Cal/OSHA may move to adopt a permanent standard aimed to generally address airborne infectious diseases like COVID-19, or the governor may issue an executive order extending the ETS provisions. The revised ETS is currently set to take effect on and to expire on December 31, 2022, at which time the ETS’s fate is unknown.

As such, the revised ETS will be submitted to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL), which will have ten calendar days to review and decide on the proposed ETS. In fact, Cal/OSHA Standards Board approved a newly revised version of its COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) on April 21, 2022, given the evolving COVID-19 landscape and the impending expiration of the ETS’s prior version on May 6, 2022, per the 90-day extension under Governor Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order N-5-22. It may feel as though the pandemic is behind us, but California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) Standards Board is not yet ready to lift all COVID-19-related safety measures for workplaces in California. On April 6, 2022, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) updated its isolation and quarantine guidance to no longer require close contacts to quarantine after exposure, though those not fully vaccinated or recently infected in the prior 90 days are advised to still be excluded from work for at least 5 days with testing.Īlthough several localities have stated they will not be following such relaxed guidance and will still mandate unvaccinated individuals to quarantine for five days after a close contact in accordance with CDC guidance, these changes hint at the beginning of the end for the government’s pandemic oversight.
