I’m a nurse and there was a COVID exposure on my floor, so naturally the place went up in flames. I’ve already had it in March so I wasn’t worried since I’m a human being who creates an immune response following an infection as it has worked for the past millions of years for our species. My boss, who’s actually very based, did her manager job and said I should get tested and I told her no since often if you’ve had it you return a false positive (as has happened with several patients) and I have no symptoms. Plus there’s a universal mask policy in place anyway. She said that’s fine and that was that.
And then I get a call from the hospital to get tested and I tell the lady I had it in March. She says there’s “no proof” I have immunity and I tell her basic immunology says I do and I’m not getting tested, I have zero symptom, I dont know why we have these hysterical policies and Im not risking returning a false positive and being treated like a leper for two weeks. She said ok well I cant force you I said correct. And that was it. So we’ll see what happens next but most likely nothing will. Just like 99% of cases 🙃
If you are union, contact your union representative and have them explain to management that they will file a grievance unless the facility is willing to pay you for your lost wages (including any overtime accruals) and not have the time come out of your sick time - should you test positive and be asymptomatic. Have the representative explain that this grievance will be filed with the Joint Commission as well, since neither the CDC or Joint Commission have established anything supporting removing health care workers from the available pool. The trend has been in the opposite direction, in fact - trying to get health care workers back to work sooner. Your state department of health may have guidance on this. When the company considers they may have to pay you for not being available for work is when they suddenly discover they don't really need to test you.
Possible "Exposure" alone hasn't been reason to do mandatory Covid tests on health care workers since around April. The hospitals called out for these changes because they were paying out a fortune to travelers to cover all the missing staff. Good luck on all this - there's a lot of hot dogging going on with Covid - both low level managers and higher level executives doing whatever they think is best, and not following official guidance.