Van Wyngarden outlined the following principles:
- If an employee has any COVID-19 symptoms—fever, cough or shortness of breath—they need to notify their supervisor and they should stay home. Employers are permitted to ask a worker if they are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, but the information must be treated as a confidential medical record.
- Employers are also permitted to take any of their employees’ body temperatures, which is not normally allowed.
- The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission now permits employers to require employees with symptoms to stay home, whether or not they've actually tested positive for COVID-19. Information can be found at https://www.eeoc.gov/coronavirus/.
In addition, Van Wyngarden states that if an employee either appears ill when they arrive at work or becomes ill during their shift:
- Separate that employee from other workers, customers, and visitors immediately, and send that person home.
- Ask the employee for the names of anyone that they've been in close contact with in the last 14 days—wincluding other employees, vendors and delivery personnel, and those people should be informed without revealing the employee’s identity.
- Encourage employees to self-monitor for signs and symptoms of the virus.
- Recommendations on cleaning vary, but Van Wyngarden suggested using common sense and conducting a thorough sanitization of the relevant areas of the restaurant, at a minimum.
Find the full article from Restaurant Hospitality here.