A new COVID-related bonus from the State of Minnesota is coming “to thank those Minnesotans who worked on the frontlines during the COVID-19 peacetime emergency.” Certain employers who employed frontline workers in Minnesota have affirmative, required steps to take to make their employees aware of the opportunity.
On May 30, 2022, Politico published an article with the headline: America’s Hospital Regulator Wasn’t Designed for a Pandemic.” The crux of the article: “[T]he Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is ill-equipped to enforce its rules.” This matters for hospitals and other healthcare facilities still grappling with masks and vaccines.
Five interesting takeaways from the article are outlined below.
On Tuesday, April 19, the American Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Section hosted the panel “Navigating the New Normal: Accommodations in the Pandemic Era.” The panel members were Alex Breland of CDK Global in Chicago, IL; Pamela Devi Chandran of the Washington State Nurses Association in Seattle, WA; and Jackie Gessner of Barnes & Thornburg LLP in Indianapolis, IN. Carolyn Wheeler of Katz, Marshall, & Banks LLP in Washington, DC served as moderator. Their consensus was that, although vaccines have (thankfully) lowered Covid-19 infection and death rates, workplace challenges related to Covid have not gone away. They have only changed.