COVID-19 Briefing - 10/13

Today's Recap:

• While Regeneron and Eli Lilly have applied for emergency FDA approval of their monoclonal antibody treatments, like President Trump received, there is still no scientific evidence that they impact patient outcomes. And then today Eli Lilly paused its trials for that treatment (and J&J paused their vaccine trial).
  
• There is increasing evidence, with a second confirmed case, that  COVID-19 reinfection can occur in less than 90 days. We will keep a close eye on this and update our guidelines about when we exclude previously COVID+ folks as needed. 
• Flu season is here. We’re starting to see confirmed flu cases. Get your flu shots, folks!
  
• It appears that there is low risk of transmission from COVID+ moms to newborns.
  
• Airborne droplets may drive more transmission than we thought according to the newest info from a panel of aerosol researchers.
• Lots of you have wanted to talk about the new report which shows coronavirus lives on cell phones and other hard surfaces for up to 28 days, although person to person transmission is still much more likely.  Coronavirus may live much longer than the flu virus on smartphone screens.
• While some health departments have a history of going public on health issues, that practice has escalated this week - particularly in Colorado.  We’re also seeing closure of businesses for at least 24 hours in Upstate NY, Massachusetts and New Mexico (up to 14 days).  Employee positives in NM remain the most challenging anywhere!
• A month into the school year, and the Atlantic reports that socially distanced, partially hybrid versions of schools appear not to be COVID-19 super-spreaders. 
• Bubbles work. The NBA had zero COVID-19 cases inside its 6,500-person bubble during the restarted season, the NHL was able to do it, too.
  
  

Best Questions:

If an employee lives in the basement and has had no contact with the person who tested positive for over a month, do we need to exclude? 

No. It only matters if they’ve had close physical contact in the time when the sick person might be infectious. If they have separate spaces and don’t interact at all, there’s no need to exclude this employee. 

An employee has allergies and takes medication. They are dog sitting and have congestion not relieved with meds,  which is normal for them. Can they work? 

If congestion is their only symptom, but it’s new and not resolved by medication, we would generally keep them out for 3 days from their symptom onset. If no other symptoms develop or worsen during that time, they can return after 3 days.

An employee’s mom tested positive recently. He had COVID symptoms that started a few weeks ago, but was never tested. Does he need to be excluded again?

Unfortunately, yes. It’s very possible that he already had COVID, but without a confirmed positive test, we can’t be sure, so we need to exclude someone every time they are exposed to another positive. If he had previously tested positive, we’d have allowed him to work during the 90 days after his positive test, though as we covered in the recap above, the data on that is changing. 

I have an employee who we know lied on their survey (said they weren’t symptomatic, but they were, got tested, and now positive).  How do we handle this?

We can only give clinical guidance and this person needs to be excluded from the date of their symptom onset for ten days, and their close contacts need to be excluded for 14 days from the most recent exposure to this person while they were infectious. The violation of illness policy should be referred to HR or senior management for follow up and disciplinary action.  This would be an offense resulting in employment termination for many of our clients. 

Best Read: 

Harvard’s William A. Haseltine shares some of the lessons learned from one of our worst epidemics. 

Lessons from AIDS for the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Best Laugh:

No caption necessary. 

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Disclaimer: This Executive Summary is meant for general information and educational purposes only and does not constitute, and is not intended as, any form of medical, legal or regulatory advice or a recommendation or suggestion regarding the same.  No recipient of this information should act or refrain from acting on the basis of this information without first seeking legal advice from counsel in the relevant jurisdiction.