Keep Your Crew Safe: COVID-19 Updates

Covid-19Team Management
Written By Megan Kurashige
A black and white photograph with a man and woman dressed in clothes from the 1970s. The man is giving the woman a vaccination with an old-fashioned jet injector.

It’s time to talk about COVID again. We know. You’re tired of it. Everyone is. You may even have had a beautiful moment not too long ago when you thought it was over. But if there’s anything we’ve learned since 2019, it’s that everything can and will change. Protecting yourself and your crew against COVID-19 is now an essential part of production considerations. And with the delta variant on the rise and breakthrough cases cropping up, it’s more important than ever to stay up to date. In this installment of Ask OOTB, we’ll do our best to answer your important questions about COVID-19, using the most current resources that we could find.

We will answer the following questions:

  1. Can I request proof of vaccination from my employees? Are there rules about how I am allowed to ask?

  2. I want valid proof of vaccination from my employees. What qualifies as proof of vaccination?

  3. Do my employees qualify for sick pay if they get COVID-19? What if they just have a bad reaction to the vaccine?

  4. Do these benefits extend to my employee’s family members?

  5. How can I protect myself and my crew from getting COVID-19?

First, some quick housekeeping:

Ask OOTB is an ongoing series in which we share some of the most commonly asked questions that we receive, along with relevant information that can help you better understand all things payroll. If you have a question that you would like us to tackle, please submit it to us via our Ask OOTB online form.

And an important note: The information provided in this article does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. All information, content, and materials available in this article are for general informational purposes only. Information in this article may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. We highly recommend that you seek the advice of an attorney or tax professional rather than relying solely on the information provided herein.

Can I request proof of vaccination from my employees? Are there rules about how I am allowed to ask?

If you are in California, yes and yes. According to the EEOC (above, section K4) and Consider These Steps When Asking Employees About Vaccination Status on SHRM.org, for the most part, you can require proof of vaccination. However, the SHRM article brings up an important section of the ADA which states that you cannot ask your employees to provide you with information that might cause them to reveal the presence of a disability. Therefore, you should not ask your employees to tell you WHY they have or have not been vaccinated. Additionally, according to the EEOC, proof of vaccination is considered medical information and must be kept confidential and stored separately from other employee records. For more information on vaccination policies, check out our blog post on this topic.

I want valid proof of vaccination from my employees. What qualifies as proof of vaccination?

In the state of California, according to the California Department of Public Health’s Vaccine Record Guidelines & Standards, there are six ways that your employees can verify their vaccination status:

  1. COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card 

    • This is received upon vaccination. It includes their name, the type of vaccine they got, and dates they got their shot(s).

  2. Photo of their vaccination record card

  3. Vaccination documentation from their healthcare provider

  4. California’s Digital Vaccination Record

    • Made by going to the state of California’s Digital COVID Vaccine Record website and entering some simple information.

    • Includes a QR code that, when scanned by a SMART Health Card reader, displays your employee’s name, date of birth, the type of vaccine they got, and dates they got their shot(s).

  5. Documentation of vaccination from another employer who required one of the above methods of proof

Do my employees qualify for sick pay if they get COVID-19? What if they just have a bad reaction to the vaccine?

According to the California Department of Industrial Relations’ 2021 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave FAQs, employees are covered by the California COVID Supplemental Paid Sick Leave Law if they experience(d) any of the following scenarios between ​​January 1st, 2021 and September 30th, 2021:

  • They have to quarantine or isolate for reasons related to COVID-19 

  • They have been advised by a healthcare provider to quarantine due to COVID-19, 

  • They are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 and are seeking a medical diagnosis.

  • They are caring for a family member who has to quarantine for reasons related to COVID-19 

  • They are caring for a child whose school or daycare is closed due to COVID-19 on the premises.  

  • They are attending a vaccine appointment 

  • They cannot work or telework due to vaccine-related side effects.

Both actually having COVID-19 and having a poor reaction to the vaccine qualify your employee for supplemental sick-pay. Again, please note that this ends September 30th, 2021. 

Do these benefits extend to my employee’s family members?

Many of them, yes. According to SHRM’s Complying with COVID-19 Paid-Sick-Leave Laws in California, “In addition to an eligible employee, California’s COVID-19 supplemental paid-sick-leave law covers the following relatives:

  • The employee’s child, including a biological, adopted or foster child; stepchild; legal ward; or a child to whom the employee stands in loco parentis.

  • The employee’s (or the employee’s spouse’s or registered domestic partner’s) parent, including a biological, adoptive or foster parent; stepparent; or legal guardian. The law also covers a person who stood in loco parentis when the employee was a minor child.

  • The employee’s spouse or registered domestic partner.

  • The employee’s grandparent, grandchild or sibling.”

How can I protect myself and my crew from getting COVID-19?

In order to understand how best to protect your workers, you need to understand how COVID-19 spreads. A large number of sources, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (the CDC) and the World Health Organization (the WHO), agree on several main points. COVID spreads when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, yells, or breathes. This action on the part of an infected person causes droplets containing the virus to travel through the air. Large droplets can travel up to six feet and then quickly dissipate (“within seconds to minutes”) according to the CDC’s How COVID-19 Spreads. Small droplets, called aerosols, are more tricky. In unventilated areas, aerosols can hang in the air “for minutes to hours,” according to the aforementioned CDC article. A person becomes infected in one of three ways:

  1. Inhaling infected droplets.

  2. Getting infected droplets on their eyes, nose, ears, or mouth from direct contact with the infected person’s sneeze, cough, etc. 

  3. Touching the eyes, ears, mouth, or nose with contaminated hands. (Although, according to the above article by the CDC, “Current evidence strongly suggests transmission from contaminated surfaces does not contribute substantially to new infections.”)

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s article, Hazard Recognition, commercial photography falls either under the category of “Medium Exposure Risk” or “High Exposure Risk” due to the frequency and duration of close contact that is required between on-set personnel. One of the main differences between these two categories is how ventilated the workspace is. If your shoot is outside, or in a well-ventilated indoor space, you're operating at medium risk. If your studio has poor ventilation, it’s a high risk situation. However, all of this is to say that no matter what safety measures you take on set, your employees are still at risk of contracting COVID-19. 

Given that extremely sobering thought, there ARE ways to make it safer, and generally speaking, if they allow us to continue to do our jobs, any of these safety measures are worth pursuing. 

The following on-set prevention measures focus on decreasing the chances of one of the three forms of transmission mentioned above. Here is a list of prevention measures as recommended by the WHO, the CDC, and the US Department of Labor’s page titled Protecting Workers: Guidance on Mitigating and Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 in the Workplace.

  1. Make your workspace as well ventilated as possible. 

  2. Require that as many people on set as possible wear face coverings.

    The WHO in the above article recommends “a well-fitting three-layer mask.” The Department of Labor Article recommends “cloth face coverings, at a minimum.”

  3. Encourage physical distancing, especially when indoors.

    The CDC recommends at least 6 feet apart. The WHO recommends at least one meter.

  4. Require that employees frequently wash their hands for at least 20 seconds.

    Provide an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% ethanol or 70% isopropanol for times when hand washing is not possible. 

  5. Allow your employees to stay home if they’re sick

  6. Require that your cast and crew be vaccinated, and request proof. 

    Yes, in most cases, and in most states, so long as you make accommodations for people with religious beliefs or disabilities, you CAN do this, according to the EEOC’s What You Should Know About COVID-19 and the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and Other EEO Laws. Additionally, according to The New York Times’ transcript of President Biden’s speech on Sept. 9, 2021, “The Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees...to ensure their work forces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.” For more information on the President’s COVID-19 relief plan, check out whitehouse.gov/covidplan. 

  7. Test your workers for COVID-19 regularly.

We hope we’ve answered some of your more pressing questions about COVID-19 and how to keep your employees safe. To quickly recap, COVID-19 is passed through respiratory droplets, usually in crowded, unventilated spaces. You can reduce your employees’ risk by instituting a number of safety measures, including requiring proof of vaccination. You are allowed to ask for proof of vaccination but you can’t ask follow up questions, and you should keep vaccination records confidential and separate from other employee records. If your employees get sick from COVID-19, or have a reaction to the vaccine, they qualify for sick-pay, which also covers many of their family members.

Sources

Megan Kurashige
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