WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Labor today announced that its Occupational Safety and Health Administration has ended its COVID-19 health rules.
On June 21, 2021, OSHA issued an emergency temporary standard to protect workers from COVID-19 in health care settings, which also served as a proposed rule on which OSHA solicited comments. The agency received public comments on this proposal during several comment periods and public hearings from June 2021 to May 2022. OSHA submitted a draft final rule on COVID-19 to the Office of the management and budget of the White House on December 7, 2022.
On April 10, 2023, President Biden signed House Joint Resolution 7, which ended the national emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
With today’s announcement, OSHA is now terminating rulemaking as the most effective and efficient use of agency resources to protect healthcare workers from occupational exposure to COVID-19, as well as a host of other infectious diseases, is to focus its resources on completing infectious disease regulation for health care.