Are you prepared for a positive COVID-19 case in the workplace?

Paragraph 27 of the Consolidated COVID-19 Direction on Health and Safety in the Workplace published on 4 June 2020 details the steps an employer must take where a worker presents with symptoms related to COVID-19. 

1. Do not permit entry to the workplace or allow the worker to report to work.
   • Where an employee is asymptomatic and can work from home, the employee must continue to do so.
   • Where an employee is asymptomatic and cannot work from home, the employee must apply for sick leave.
2. If the worker is already at work.
   • Immediately isolate the worker.
   • Provide the worker with a surgical mask.
   • Arrange transportation for the worker in a manner that doesn't present a transmission risk to other workers or to members of the public. An employer may need to bear this cost.
   • Worker to self-isolate or to be referred for medical examination or testing.
   • Assess the transmission risk to other workers as well as surfaces.
   • Disinfect the area/surfaces which the worker who screened positive was in contact with, including their workstation.
   • Undertake contact tracing in the workplace to establish all those whom the worker who screened positive may have been in contact with.
   • Refer all workers who were in contact with the worker who screened positive for screening.
   • Take any other appropriate measures to prevent transmission.
   • Where it’s an employee who has screened positive, place the employee on sick leave or apply for an illness benefit for the employee where their sick leave is exhausted.
   • Ensure employees are not subject to discrimination where they screen/test positive for COVID-19.
   • Lodge a claim for compensation in terms of COIDA where there is evidence that an employee contracted COVID-19 arising from the course and scope of their employment.

*Worker is defined in the Consolidated Directive as follows: “worker” means any person who works in an employer’s workplace including an employee or contractor, a self-employed person or volunteer.