Workplace safety board calls for outbreak transparency
Members of California’s workplace safety board are questioning the state’s tight-lipped approach to releasing information about COVID-19 workplace outbreaks after reviewing an investigation by this news organization that found most county health departments — as well as the California Department of Public Health — are refusing to make specific outbreak data public.
Members of CAL/OSHA’S Standards Board aired their frustrations with the piecemeal availability of outbreak data statewide — and the haphazard nature of the records — in a meeting of a new subcommittee focused on COVID-19 workplace rules.
Although the committee did not take formal action, at least one member has suggested pressing the state to publicize comprehensive data that includes names of employers.
“It seems clear that what is really needed — and what is going to be most useful for targeting prevention efforts — is specific worksite data,” board member Laura Stock said during a July 20 meeting, adding that members should call on CDPH to release it. “Given that our purpose is to really get the closest possible picture of what’s happening in the workplace, getting that more specific data would be really, really helpful and it does sound as if it’s available and could be provided.”
After the passage of state law Assembly Bill 685, which requires workplaces to report details of outbreaks to local health departments, this news organization requested specific workplace outbreak data, including names of worksites, dates, locations and numbers of cases, from all 61 California local health departments. Twenty released the data and two more released records after the investigation was published. Seventeen have refused the requests or provided aggregated data, citing employee privacy concerns.
The records that were provided varied greatly in their time period and scope. Yet because CDPH only publicizes aggregated outbreak data by industry, the incomplete records published alongside the investigation still comprise the most complete public portrait yet of California’s workplace outbreaks.