Speaker 1: It's Monday, July. I'm Oscar and Mirrors from the Daily
Speaker 1: Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America.
Speaker 1: Today is all about testing. Short of a vaccine, testing
Speaker 1: is the first line of defense and helping limit the
Speaker 1: spread of COVID nineteen. But what will it look like
Speaker 1: when everyone returns to work. Some employers are finding out
Speaker 1: that testing employees is more trouble than it's worth. Issues
Speaker 1: with cost, access, and employee privacy are some of the
Speaker 1: reasons why testing isn't part of back to work plans. Instead,
Speaker 1: employees are in favor of lower cost options like masks,
Speaker 1: hand sanitizer, temperature checks, and symptoms screening. Emma Court, health
Speaker 1: reporter at Bloomberg News, joins us for workplace safety during
Speaker 1: the pandemic. Thanks for joining us, Emma, Thanks for having
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about workplace safety in the age
Speaker 1: of COVID nineteen. Obviously a lot of places have started
Speaker 1: to return to work, but there's still a lot of
Speaker 1: other companies that are formulating those plans and rolling it
Speaker 1: out a little bit more or slowly. I know our company,
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio is taking a much slower approach to
Speaker 1: bringing everybody back, but One of the interesting things that
Speaker 1: has popped up with this is testing again. Testing has
Speaker 1: become this thing that has ramped up again as cases
Speaker 1: are starting to surge, But employers are finding that testing
Speaker 1: might be a little more trouble than it's worth. And
Speaker 1: it all has to do with cost. A lot of
Speaker 1: the diagnostic tests started around a hundred dollars each. The
Speaker 1: access and logistics to all of this stuff is pretty
Speaker 1: daunting and cost prohibitive sometimes. So I'm gonna tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about this. You reason the important point here,
Speaker 1: which is when you talk about employers, there's a vast
Speaker 1: range of scenarios you can think about, right there. Some
Speaker 1: companies have been the workplaces have been operating throughout this pandemic,
Speaker 1: right you think of healthcare providers or manufacturing, even some
Speaker 1: essential construction, right and then there are other kinds of
Speaker 1: employers that are only starting to grapple with you know,
Speaker 1: should we go back to work, what would that look like?
Speaker 1: You know now? And it depends highly on locality and
Speaker 1: where you are in a country, how prorective or employees
Speaker 1: have been during quarantine. So there's so many factors to
Speaker 1: consider here. But what's really interesting about the role of testing.
Speaker 1: All this is that testing has been such a first
Speaker 1: line solution when it comes to the spread of COVID.
Speaker 1: It's been absolutely essential in terms of stemming the virus
Speaker 1: is spread. We don't have a vaccine, but we do
Speaker 1: have testing, and in fact, shortages of testing have been
Speaker 1: a big impediment in terms of the US's ability to
Speaker 1: stand the spread of this virus. So that's an important
Speaker 1: piece of context when you consider employers are coming into
Speaker 1: all of this and thinking about whether they'll even be
Speaker 1: able to access testing in a consistent way for their
Speaker 1: employees and provide that on site to their workers. And
Speaker 1: then these issues of costs, So as you point out,
Speaker 1: it's about a hundred dollars of tests for an active
Speaker 1: infection in the United States. And then if you factor
Speaker 1: on top of that the fact that these are one
Speaker 1: time test right, So if I get tested right now
Speaker 1: and I test negative, that tells my employer that as
Speaker 1: this exact time, on this exact date, I'm negative, But
Speaker 1: it doesn't tell my employer what happens afterwards. Did I,
Speaker 1: you know, worker out onto the street and become infected.
Speaker 1: Did I, you know, quote a big event and come
Speaker 1: into contact with someone who was ill. So this is
Speaker 1: a critical limitation when you think about the relevance of
Speaker 1: these tests, and then there are all of these other
Speaker 1: issues of logistics. Testing times for turnaround tents are creeping up,
Speaker 1: so ideally you would want test results back within fifteen
Speaker 1: or twenty or thirty minutes. Even days at this point
Speaker 1: is kind of not happening. So people are waiting as
Speaker 1: long as seven days, ten days sometimes to get their
Speaker 1: test results back. So that's another challenge. Right, if you
Speaker 1: only get my test result back a week from now,
Speaker 1: how much information does that really give you? How helpful
Speaker 1: is that? Maybe it's time for me to take another
Speaker 1: test by that point, right, And then there are these
Speaker 1: other questions. This is a totally new role employer would
Speaker 1: be taking in their employees healthcare, right. I mean, employers
Speaker 1: may provide health insurance to their employees, but they're not
Speaker 1: usually involved in administering tests on site. So do employees
Speaker 1: even want that. We're hearing yes that Disney Resorts, for instance,
Speaker 1: performers are saying, we want to have tests to go
Speaker 1: back to work. We're eager to go back to work,
Speaker 1: but we can't wear masks, we can't work gloves like
Speaker 1: other professions. We can't work from home. How can you
Speaker 1: make this happen? In Las Vegas, You're having casino employees
Speaker 1: represented by a union actually doing some casinos calling from
Speaker 1: mandatory testing. So this is something that's only beginning to emerge.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a burgeoning issue, but I would expect
Speaker 1: to see a lot more clashes about this as we
Speaker 1: move forward. Yeah, I mean, there was even a recent
Speaker 1: survey done of forty large employers and testing was the
Speaker 1: way at the bottom of the list. You know, they
Speaker 1: want to alter the workplace to allow for social distancing,
Speaker 1: the face mask, on site question and airs, are you sick,
Speaker 1: are you experiencing symptoms, temperature checks, That way at the
Speaker 1: bottom is conducting on site testing. So obviously something that
Speaker 1: they're aware of. But one of the biggest concerns about it,
Speaker 1: as we keep saying, is it just the costs. And
Speaker 1: they're even trying to get to see if insurance can
Speaker 1: pay for some of these costs. So it's definitely a
Speaker 1: big concern there. When you think about going back to
Speaker 1: the office and you think about what public health recommendations
Speaker 1: are in terms of preventing COVID from spreading its social distancing,
Speaker 1: right and that's pretty manageable in an office. You take
Speaker 1: away some chairs, you spread out desks more. It's not
Speaker 1: the easiest possible thing, but it's pretty easy. And then
Speaker 1: requiring face masks also fairly low cost intervention. Maybe you
Speaker 1: have to provide your employees face masks for something like that,
Speaker 1: but again not the biggest poll not the biggest lift
Speaker 1: in the world. Administering screenings, so basically sending an employee
Speaker 1: maybe a for questionnaire asking symptoms, things like that, were
Speaker 1: you in a high risk situation? Maybe even also temperate
Speaker 1: for checks, maybe buying some fancy machine that will screen
Speaker 1: people as they come in and ensure that they're not
Speaker 1: running a temperature. Maybe providing your employees with thermometer so
Speaker 1: they can test their temperature when it come in. Contact
Speaker 1: tracing going through your office and ensuring that someone who's
Speaker 1: tested positive, telling people who they've been in contact with
Speaker 1: about it, ensuring their quarantine. These are all relatively doable
Speaker 1: to implement in the workplace. And installing plexiglass, although it's
Speaker 1: perhaps somewhat more costly than social distancing, still adding these
Speaker 1: physical barriers doable, and then testing is where you get
Speaker 1: into some of the bigger costs, And it's worth noting
Speaker 1: that employers have gone through a period, many of them
Speaker 1: during your shortgounds, suffered tremendous financial costs, and so when
Speaker 1: you think about adding to that by implementing a costly
Speaker 1: measure that doesn't return as much as you would like,
Speaker 1: I think that's where many of them are drawing the line,
Speaker 1: and it remains to be seen how this will play out.
Speaker 1: I think as testing check analogy hopefully improves and more
Speaker 1: fast turnaround tests become available, things that you can actually
Speaker 1: do on site at a workplace lobby or attend outside,
Speaker 1: providing fifteen minute results to patients, to patients who are
Speaker 1: also your employees, I think that will really change the
Speaker 1: calculist for employers. There are faster tests that are much
Speaker 1: much cheaper that are starting to come to market now.
Speaker 1: But given the testing crunch that the United States has
Speaker 1: right now, how available these things will be the employers,
Speaker 1: even large employers that have a lot of approachasing power,
Speaker 1: it's hard to know right now, and it's hard to
Speaker 1: know how things are going to play out. I think
Speaker 1: a really important question that comes up in all of
Speaker 1: this is should employers be sending their employees back to
Speaker 1: the workplace if they can't guarantee them a safe environment, right,
Speaker 1: if they're not willing to do testing that can provide
Speaker 1: a scientific answer as to whether employees have COVID nanking
Speaker 1: or not. A lot of these lower cost measures we've
Speaker 1: been talking about won't catch everything. They may catch someone
Speaker 1: who has symptoms, but these asymptomatic cures, which we know
Speaker 1: to be a pretty big chunk of how this virus
Speaker 1: is getting spread, those people probably won't get caught by
Speaker 1: these measurers, and that's a problem. Well, for as much
Speaker 1: as we are returning to work, there's still a lot
Speaker 1: of plans yet to be worked out to actually safely
Speaker 1: get us back there. So definitely something that we continue
Speaker 1: to follow and m the Court health reporter at Bloomberg News.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't
Speaker 1: forget effort today's big news stories. You can check me
Speaker 1: out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday to Friday.
Speaker 1: So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.