Ever since the novel Coronavirus began making its notorious entry into the world and as metropolitan areas like NYC saw the worst spread of infectious disease across the nation, rules were put in place to help stop the spread. From social distancing to masking and lockdowns. Fast forward over 17 months later and we’re still looking at the threats from additional variants of this disease as a population.

In the hard-hit New York area, new rules and regulations are emerging to protect businesses and their employees.

The gears were set in motion back in May 2021 with the passage of the New York Health and Essential Rights Act – also known as the “HERO Act” which is basically health and safety laws mandating protections for employees amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes any workplaces that are operating in-person operations to comply with all health and safety directives and executive orders and applies to all private employers with up to 1 employee.

An additional law that’s also been put in place now is the requirement that all workplaces have an Infectious Disease Exposure Prevention Plan (IDEPP) in place. Some of the things like employee health screenings, face coverings, PPE, accessible hand hygiene materials and break time and cleaning and disinfecting rules as well as social distancing rules, and more are included.

Developed by the New York State Department of Labor (NYS DOL), in consultation with the NYS Department of Health, the standards are a template that workplaces can model their plans from. They also have the choice to create their own plans but they must at minimum meet the state’s outlined standards.

All of these laws have an ultimate goal of protecting New York workers from airborne infectious diseases during an outbreak now – and in the future. Whenever the New York State Commissioner declares a risk is in place for the public, these plans will be put into effect.

Employers had an August 5 deadline for adopting a standard relevant to their industry and now have until September 4 to provide written details of this prevention plan to employees.