What do I do if an employee tests positive for COVID-19?
In recent days there have been a lot of questions about what you should do if you have an employee that tests positive for COVID-19. There has been no clear step-by-step direction from regulatory agencies as to how you should precede other than what the patient who tested positive should do. This is partly due to the fact that this does require regulatory action on the part of inspection agencies.
In phone calls with the USDA Office of Food Safety and FSIS, the agency is directing us to use the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) guidelines for businesses. An employee that tests positive for the virus does not affect the food being produced; the virus does not spread in food or food packaging, it spreads person to person. There are a number of ways a company can choose to address the situation and that varies from business to business depending on a number of circumstances.