Many employers are now seeing clusters of positives, with some onset dates five to seven days after employee close contact and exclusion. We have no way of knowing whether or not they were infected at work or elsewhere. Many employees have contact with the same sick co-worker at work and outside of work. Some employees are filing claims, stating they had workplace transmission. This will continue to get more complicated as COVID continues to spread.
Yes, that is technically correct. However, some states are now advising to take whatever second dose you can get, although the FDA has clarified that you should not mix and match doses. And there is some discussion about holding off on Dose 2 until more people get Dose 1 (again, the FDA is advising against that). The clinical trials on these vaccines were all conducted following the two dose format - properly spaced apart by 3-4 weeks depending on which vaccine. We have seen several instances where the same brand was not available at the appointed Dose 2 date and the providers rescheduled for a later date when that vaccine was available, or referred the person to another vaccination site that had appointments and the proper vaccine available.
Yes. There is not currently a system in place for easily accommodating multi-state vaccination. We anticipate that this snafu will be addressed soon. In the interim, the employee will need to communicate directly with the health department in their new state, delay dose 2 or go back to the state where they received the first dose. This is yet another COVID vaccination complexity.
Our clinical team has now seen several fake or altered positive COVID results. Some people are inserting their own name in place of someone else’s, or changing the test date to an earlier date so they can try to come back to work sooner. We review and keep a copy of results for our electronic wellness check clients. When we suspect a result has been altered, a clinical team member calls the clinic or lab and explains the situation. Most of the time they will verify a result for us, or confirm that a result is in their format or never altered with white out. While they can’t always share results with us, we can usually send them their own result back and ask them to validate it is theirs and not altered. Most employers will terminate employment if this happens, but that’s an HR or Legal question.
It’s all over the news, but this Atlantic article does a good job of explaining why the new virus variant is so dangerous even if it doesn’t lead to more severe illness and even if the vaccine still works against it. Being more transmissible could lead to exponential growth in cases.
But even with all that said and the current vaccine mayhem, we still have high hopes for vaccinations getting us closer to normal this year. Cheers to a better 2021!
ZERO HOUR HEALTH + ZEDIC WEBINAR SERIES
As we've all seen, the vaccine is coming, but what do you need to know as a business owner?
We're going to discuss everything including the differences in the vaccine brands, side effects, the status of the roll-out, when you might expect to get vaccinated, when your workforce will, tracking of all of this information, and much, much more.
We'll leave plenty of time for Q&A, so bring us your best questions!
Feel free to share with anyone on your team that might be interested!