Santa Clara County will require employers to determine the vaccination status of their employees starting Wednesday as the state moves away from remote office work, aiming to get ahead of a wider June 15th reopening and potential revisions to workplace rules.
The mandate appears to advance beyond what the state has so far required of employers, though California already allows businesses to use vaccination status to determine whether people may attend certain larger gatherings like sports games, weddings, conferences, concerts or theater shows.
County Counsel James Williams told reporters Tuesday that the requirement is part of the county’s latest reopening order as as it progresses into the yellow reopening tier. Workplaces will no longer be required to maximize remote work, but they must begin determining whether employees have been vaccinated. The order also requires workplaces and schools to continue reporting COVID-19 cases.
County officials wanted to get ahead of potential revisions to California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health or Cal/OSHA workplace standards, Williams said. On Thursday, Cal/OSHA’s Standards Board will consider allowing fully vaccinated workers to stop socially distancing from one another, among other updates to existing rules.
“Those regulations very clearly differentiate between what’s required in the workplace in terms of safety rules for those who are fully vaccinated and those who are not,” Williams said. “We’ll see what the final rule is that’s adopted, but we foresee that there will be more along those lines.”
“That’s why it’s all the more important, number one, for businesses to know the vaccination status of their workers,” he added.
Here’s what you need to know about Santa Clara County’s new workplace COVID vaccine tracking rules
Questions surrounding different protocols for vaccinated and unvaccinated people, including workers, have dogged California for weeks. Some states, including Florida, have made it illegal to ask for people’s vaccination status in businesses and government agencies, while others have put the onus on businesses to find out whether patrons and staff are vaccinated.
The California Department of Public Health has so far has stopped short of making employers collect such information about their staff, even as it has embraced the concept of “vaccine passports” for many events and gatherings. A spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon as to whether the state will consider implementing a similar mandate.
Officials emphasized that the new order does not mean that any employees must get the shots, although some workplaces may mandate vaccinations. Last month, for instance, the California State University and University of California systems said that they would move forward with plans to require vaccinations for all students, faculty and staff before on-campus instruction restarts this fall.
Those who refuse to share whether they have been vaccinated with their employer, however, must follow any future rules as though they are unvaccinated.
The new requirement also comes amid discussions over vaccine-based masking in California after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did away with most mask mandates for vaccinated people. California has decided to keep its own stricter mask mandate in place until Gov. Gavin Newsom’s planned June 15th reopening.
Until then, knowing who has gotten the shot will help business prepare for continuing divergences between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, said Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody.
“We’ve taken a step that we hope is helpful, in that we’ve given businesses specific directions for how to implement this, for what to do,” she said.
