OSHA Proposes Removal of COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard
On June 30, 2025, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published a proposed rule in the Federal Register (90 FR 28336) to remove the remaining parts of its COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard that are still in effect.
The COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard was issued on June 21, 2021, to protect workers in healthcare settings from exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19. When the Emergency Temporary Standard was issued, COVID-19 presented a grave danger to healthcare and healthcare support workers, and the Emergency Temporary Standard was necessary to protect those workers.
That same month, OSHA also promulgated COVID-19 recordkeeping and reporting provisions under the OSH Act. Employers were required to establish, maintain, and provide copies of a COVID-19 log of all COVID-19 infections and fatalities, regardless of how much time passed between the work-related exposure and an employer learning about COVID-19-related hospitalizations or fatalities. Covered healthcare employers were also required to report any staff hospitalizations and fatalities due to COVID-19 to OSHA.
OSHA also sought to implement a permanent COVID-19 standard to protect healthcare workers, but abandoned those efforts in January 2025, having determined that any ongoing risk of COVID-19 in healthcare would be better addressed through OSHA rulemaking that addresses a broader range of infectious respiratory diseases. While OSHA stopped enforcing the bulk of the Emergency Temporary Standard by the end of 2021, the recordkeeping and reporting requirements remained.
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Now that the Public Health Emergency has ended, COVID-19 vaccines are widely available, and infections are now treated by medical professionals similar to other respiratory illnesses, such as influenza, OSHA is proposing to remove the remaining recordkeeping and reporting requirements related to healthcare workers with COVID-19 from the Code of Federal Regulations.
OSHA estimates the removal of these remaining provisions will result in annual cost savings of $1,587,494. OSHA is accepting comments on the proposed rule until September 2, 2025.
