Testing at the Workplace Might Be More Trouble Than It's Worth for Some Employers

reasons why testing isn't part of back to work plans. Instead, employees are in favor of lower cost options like masks, hand sanitizer, temperature checks, and symptoms screening. Emma Court, health reporter at Bloomberg News, joins us for workplace safety during the pandemic. Thanks for joining us, Emma, Thanks for having I wanted to talk about workplace safety in the age

of COVID nineteen. Obviously a lot of places have started to return to work, but there's still a lot of other companies that are formulating those plans and rolling it out a little bit more or slowly. I know our company, I Heart Radio is taking a much slower approach to bringing everybody back, but One of the interesting things that

has popped up with this is testing again. Testing has become this thing that has ramped up again as cases are starting to surge, But employers are finding that testing might be a little more trouble than it's worth. And it all has to do with cost. A lot of the diagnostic tests started around a hundred dollars each. The access and logistics to all of this stuff is pretty daunting and cost prohibitive sometimes. So I'm gonna tell us

a little bit about this. You reason the important point here, which is when you talk about employers, there's a vast range of scenarios you can think about, right there. Some companies have been the workplaces have been operating throughout this pandemic, right you think of healthcare providers or manufacturing, even some essential construction, right and then there are other kinds of employers that are only starting to grapple with you know, should we go back to work, what would that look like?

You know now? And it depends highly on locality and where you are in a country, how prorective or employees have been during quarantine. So there's so many factors to consider here. But what's really interesting about the role of testing. All this is that testing has been such a first line solution when it comes to the spread of COVID. It's been absolutely essential in terms of stemming the virus

is spread. We don't have a vaccine, but we do have testing, and in fact, shortages of testing have been a big impediment in terms of the US's ability to stand the spread of this virus. So that's an important piece of context when you consider employers are coming into all of this and thinking about whether they'll even be able to access testing in a consistent way for their

employees and provide that on site to their workers. And then these issues of costs, So as you point out, it's about a hundred dollars of tests for an active infection in the United States. And then if you factor on top of that the fact that these are one time test right, So if I get tested right now and I test negative, that tells my employer that as this exact time, on this exact date, I'm negative, But

it doesn't tell my employer what happens afterwards. Did I, you know, worker out onto the street and become infected. Did I, you know, quote a big event and come into contact with someone who was ill. So this is a critical limitation when you think about the relevance of these tests, and then there are all of these other issues of logistics. Testing times for turnaround tents are creeping up, so ideally you would want test results back within fifteen

or twenty or thirty minutes. Even days at this point is kind of not happening. So people are waiting as long as seven days, ten days sometimes to get their test results back. So that's another challenge. Right, if you only get my test result back a week from now, how much information does that really give you? How helpful is that? Maybe it's time for me to take another test by that point, right, And then there are these other questions. This is a totally new role employer would

be taking in their employees healthcare, right. I mean, employers may provide health insurance to their employees, but they're not usually involved in administering tests on site. So do employees even want that. We're hearing yes that Disney Resorts, for instance, performers are saying, we want to have tests to go back to work. We're eager to go back to work, but we can't wear masks, we can't work gloves like other professions. We can't work from home. How can you

make this happen? In Las Vegas, You're having casino employees represented by a union actually doing some casinos calling from mandatory testing. So this is something that's only beginning to emerge. It's sort of a burgeoning issue, but I would expect to see a lot more clashes about this as we move forward. Yeah, I mean, there was even a recent survey done of forty large employers and testing was the

way at the bottom of the list. You know, they want to alter the workplace to allow for social distancing, the face mask, on site question and airs, are you sick, are you experiencing symptoms, temperature checks, That way at the bottom is conducting on site testing. So obviously something that they're aware of. But one of the biggest concerns about it, as we keep saying, is it just the costs. And they're even trying to get to see if insurance can pay for some of these costs. So it's definitely a

big concern there. When you think about going back to the office and you think about what public health recommendations are in terms of preventing COVID from spreading its social distancing, right and that's pretty manageable in an office. You take away some chairs, you spread out desks more. It's not the easiest possible thing, but it's pretty easy. And then

requiring face masks also fairly low cost intervention. Maybe you have to provide your employees face masks for something like that, but again not the biggest poll not the biggest lift in the world. Administering screenings, so basically sending an employee maybe a for questionnaire asking symptoms, things like that, were you in a high risk situation? Maybe even also temperate for checks, maybe buying some fancy machine that will screen people as they come in and ensure that they're not

running a temperature. Maybe providing your employees with thermometer so they can test their temperature when it come in. Contact tracing going through your office and ensuring that someone who's tested positive, telling people who they've been in contact with about it, ensuring their quarantine. These are all relatively doable

to implement in the workplace. And installing plexiglass, although it's perhaps somewhat more costly than social distancing, still adding these physical barriers doable, and then testing is where you get into some of the bigger costs, And it's worth noting that employers have gone through a period, many of them during your shortgounds, suffered tremendous financial costs, and so when you think about adding to that by implementing a costly measure that doesn't return as much as you would like,

I think that's where many of them are drawing the line, and it remains to be seen how this will play out. I think as testing check analogy hopefully improves and more fast turnaround tests become available, things that you can actually do on site at a workplace lobby or attend outside, providing fifteen minute results to patients, to patients who are also your employees, I think that will really change the

calculist for employers. There are faster tests that are much much cheaper that are starting to come to market now. But given the testing crunch that the United States has right now, how available these things will be the employers, even large employers that have a lot of approachasing power, it's hard to know right now, and it's hard to

know how things are going to play out. I think a really important question that comes up in all of this is should employers be sending their employees back to the workplace if they can't guarantee them a safe environment, right, if they're not willing to do testing that can provide a scientific answer as to whether employees have COVID nanking or not. A lot of these lower cost measures we've

been talking about won't catch everything. They may catch someone who has symptoms, but these asymptomatic cures, which we know to be a pretty big chunk of how this virus is getting spread, those people probably won't get caught by these measurers, and that's a problem. Well, for as much as we are returning to work, there's still a lot of plans yet to be worked out to actually safely

get us back there. So definitely something that we continue to follow and m the Court health reporter at Bloomberg News. Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks so much. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday to Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcasts.