National Nurses United (NNU) today condemned the Biden administration's latest moves to rip away protections from health care workers and the public, saying the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) weakening Covid isolation guidelines and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announcing that it will rescind critical Covid protections for health care workers—right when the Omicron variant is exploding across the country during a winter surge–puts countless lives at risk.

“Nurses have fought since day one of this pandemic for protections based on science and the precautionary principle,” said NNU President Zenei Triunfo-Cortez, RN. “Our demands included optimal isolation times to prevent further Covid spread and an enforceable OSHA Covid health care industry standard to mandate our profit-driven employers, who would never do it on their own, give us optimal protections at work. Nurses applauded the Biden administration when OSHA issued an emergency temporary Covid standard (ETS) in June of 2021, and now we are dumbfounded and enraged that OSHA is rescinding those protections at the same time that the CDC is weakening isolation guidelines to seven days for health care workers and even less time ‘if there are staffing shortages.’”

“OSHA’s assertion that it ‘intends to work expeditiously to issue a final standard that will protect healthcare workers from COVID-19 hazards’ is welcome but wholly insufficient until such a standard is actually promulgated and has the force of law,” Triunfo-Cortez continued. “The Department of Labor has had more than six months to make this happen, and yet the administration will be leaving nurses and other health care workers defenseless if the ETS is rescinded. Despite President Biden’s promises that he would protect nurses, we can see in his administration’s actions this week that those were just empty words.”
On Dec. 22, NNU sent a letter to the CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, signed by Triunfo-Cortez, urging the agency to “maintain current guidance regarding isolation after a positive SARS-CoV-2 test for health care workers, other frontline workers, and the general public.” The following day, the CDC shortened the isolation period for nurses and other workers who have tested positive for Covid-19 from 10 to seven days and announced exposed vaccinated and boosted health care workers are no longer required to quarantine. On Dec. 27, the agency announced new guidelines for the general public, reducing isolation times to as few as five days.

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