{"id":418,"date":"2020-04-14T13:02:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T17:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/?p=418"},"modified":"2020-09-01T09:38:12","modified_gmt":"2020-09-01T13:38:12","slug":"the-fra-provides-guidance-on-best-practices-and-reporting-cases-of-covid-19-among-railroad-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/2020\/04\/14\/the-fra-provides-guidance-on-best-practices-and-reporting-cases-of-covid-19-among-railroad-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"The FRA Provides Guidance on Best Practices and Reporting Cases of COVID-19 Among Railroad Employees"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sharon L. Caffrey<\/a>, Jeffrey S. Pollack<\/a> and Matthew Decker<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Federal Railroad Administration (the \u201cFRA\u201d) has recently issued regulatory guidance regarding safety precautions related to COVID-19 and whether employee illnesses must be reported under 49 C.F.R. Part 225.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

On April 10, 2020, the FRA issued Safety Advisory 2020-01 \u2013 Safety Precautions Related to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID\u201319), the full text of which is available on the FRA website<\/a>.\u00a0 In summary, the FRA encourages railroads, their employees and contractors to review and follow all applicable guidance available related to COVID\u201319, including the best practices identified in the President\u2019s Coronavirus Guidelines for America\u201430 Days to Slow the Spread of Coronavirus (COVID\u201319)<\/a>, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s (CDC) COVID\u201319 guidelines<\/a>, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration\u2019s (OSHA) Guidance on Preparing Workplaces for COVID\u201319<\/a>. The FRA encourages railroads, if they have not already done so, to develop and implement procedures and practices consistent with these best practices.<\/p>\n

These best practices include, but are not limited to,
\n(1) developing an infectious disease preparedness and response plan;
\n(2) implementing basic prevention measures, such as frequent hand washing, respiratory etiquette and encouraging or requiring workers to stay home when sick;
\n(3) instituting policies and procedures to promptly identify and isolate employees who have contracted or potentially been exposed to COVID-19;
\n(4) implementing flexible workplace protections that encourage those who can work from home to do so, and encourage sick employees to stay at home and not come to work, and;
\n(5) implementing appropriate workplace, engineering and administrative controls where feasible to reduce potential exposure.<\/p>\n

Additionally, on April 13, 2020, the FRA also provided guidance on whether railroads must report employee illnesses when an employee is diagnosed with COVID-19, the full text of which is available on the FRA website<\/a>.\u00a0 Because of the nature of the disease and how it is transmitted, reporting generally will not be required.\u00a0 As the FRA states, \u201ccommunity transmission of the disease will make it difficult for a railroad to determine if an employee contracted COVID-19 while on duty unless there is objective evidence, that is reasonably available to the employer, to determine work-relatedness.\u201d\u00a0 Thus, \u201cwhere there is no reasonably available, objective evidence that the confirmed case resulted from a work-related exposure,\u201d reporting will not be required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Sharon L. Caffrey, Jeffrey S. Pollack and Matthew Decker The Federal Railroad Administration (the \u201cFRA\u201d) has recently issued regulatory guidance regarding safety precautions related to COVID-19 and whether employee illnesses must be reported under 49 C.F.R. Part 225.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[538,539,274,441,386],"ppma_author":[1043],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-federal-railroad-administration","tag-fra","tag-regulations","tag-reporting","tag-transportation"],"authors":[{"term_id":1043,"user_id":6,"is_guest":0,"slug":"duanemorris3","display_name":"Duane Morris","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/843ff6e7a8fe5fc92109b47a45f34b6cf0ea499e6e788db23456c838b0ae6747?s=96&d=blank&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/coronaviruscovid19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}