The Vaccine Mandate: What Does It Mean For The RV Industry?

Since President Biden announced on September 24th his Executive Order mandating vaccines for all private sector companies with 100 or more employees, great confusion has spread throughout the land. What does this mean? How will it work? When will it be enforced?

The confusion has only been amplified when after six weeks of suspense, on November 5th, the US Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published its Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS), a 490-page document outlining the rules and requirements of President Biden’s Executive Order with an enforcement date set for January 4, 2022. But it only took a day and a half for Biden's vaccine-or-test rule to be blocked by a federal appeals court. Even with the order currently blocked, the Biden Administration is telling businesses to proceed with the mandate.

In light of all of this confusion, the RV Industry Association has provided a resource webpage for members looking understand what the mandate means for their businesses.

In addition, the Association’s Workplace Safety Taskforce engaged Dr. Anthony N. Harris, the CEO and Medical Director of HFit Occupational Health, LLC, Rick Puckett, Vice President EHS & Sustainability for Winnebago Industries and Erick Click, Vice President EHS for Lippert for an online panel discussion to discuss implementation of the mandate to not only be in compliance, but also to protect your workforce.

Read on for the key takeaways from the seminar or watch the recording here.

Dr. Harris’s presentation was based on three personal predictions:

1. SARS-CoV-2 will remain a threat to workplace health and safety for at least the next five years
2. Genetic changes to SARS-CoV-2 may increase workplace risk again to pandemic levels
3. Prevention strategy will be essential to business competitive sustainability

“The focus should be on continuous surveillance of the workforce, sustainability, and worker participation,” he said.

During the seminar, Harris outlined three levels of prevention: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.

Primary Prevention was focused on workforce wellness and community incidence monitoring and it addressed leading indicators for transmission risk. Corporate mandates focused in this level of prevention are vaccination, masks, and social distancing.

Secondary Prevention was focused on early symptom identification and a remain-at-home policy to target early intervention for workplace transmission. This level of prevention comprised the bulk of the presentation focusing on the screening and testing challenges that could confuse and/or burden companies:

Screening

• Temperature checks are no longer reliable for identifying COVID but can flag other transmissible illnesses for which an employee should remain at home. (Note: Harris cited a study claiming that 94% of employees go to work sick.)
• While apps with symptom surveys that employees can fill out on their smartphones may be used, at large facilities, it has been found that kiosks work better to account for employees without smartphones.
• Photos of vaccination cards and artificial intelligence platforms that may be required to validate cards. Harris recommended third-party vendors to build vaccine verification and employee tracking software and dashboards for companies. Noting the prohibitive expense, Winnebago’s Puckett said, “It is highly likely that many companies will have to partner with bigger organizations to handle these.”

Testing

• PCR tests are the “gold standard” for testing and there will likely be a nationwide shortage of tests if they become mandatory.
• Weekly testing requirements could cause bottlenecks as workers submit tests and await results. “Pool testing” is a potential solution for expediting and reducing the cost of this process. An example of this is a company with 240 employees: Everyone submits a daily saliva sample. Ten groups of 24 samples are tested, which is much less expensive, and results are returned much faster than 240 individual tests. If one group tests positive, then the 24 in the positive group are retested in combined pairs. If one pair tests positive, two people in the positive pair are retested to identify the infected individual. In this example, instead of the time and cost of 240 individual tests, 23 tests would be required.

Harris’s goal for Tertiary Prevention was to manage workplace absence and return to work. This included a cost and risk analysis framework for direct healthcare costs (hospitalizations, severe illness) and indirect costs (stress and sleep disturbance associated with presenteeism; and anxiety and depression associated with absenteeism). Harris cited an average cost of $70,000 per individual hospitalized for COVID and noted incidences of chronic illness following infection including brain fog, persistent symptoms, etc. Return to work, he claims, requires multiple step interview and medical evaluation processes.

When asked about the cost of treatment for severe adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine, Harris said this has not been determined, nor has potential employer liability. Also unknown is whether current or future booster shots will be required under the definition of “fully vaccinated.” Responding to another question about medical exemptions, Harris recommended putting the burden of proof on health care providers. “They should have to determine the validity of these,” he said. “The companies shouldn’t have to do this.”

Harris acknowledged that the administration’s mandate has triggered legal battles around federal power and authority over healthcare practices. But for now, in order to avoid potential fines of up to $14,000 per infraction, most companies are exploring compliance measures.

As Lippert’s Click said, “This won’t be a simple task; there will be no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone in the industry.”