If an employee tests positive for COVID in California, your core duties are narrower than they were a year ago but they haven’t vanished. Record the case under the one Cal/OSHA rule still on the books, let the employee use their regular paid sick leave, set a clear point at which they can come back, and check whether the case has to go on your federal OSHA 300 log or trigger a hospitalization report. Everything else is now a judgment call under your general safety program.
Record the Case
Cal/OSHA’s main COVID-19 Prevention standard expired on February 3, 2025, but the recordkeeping subsection, Section 3205(j), remains enforceable until February 3, 2026. For each confirmed case in your workforce, you need to log:
- The employee’s name and contact information
- Their occupation and work location
- The last day they were physically present at the workplace
- The date of the positive test or diagnosis
Keep the records confidential and hold them for two years beyond the period they were needed to comply with the regulation. If the local health department, CDPH, Cal/OSHA, or NIOSH asks for unredacted case information, you have to turn it over immediately. After February 3, 2026, this specific tracking mandate ends, though your OSHA logs and anything your Injury and Illness Prevention Program requires will continue.
Send Them Home and Decide When They Can Return
California no longer sets a mandatory isolation period for general workplaces. CDPH now treats COVID like other respiratory viruses: stay home when sick, avoid others, mask if you have to be around people while symptomatic. That leaves the return-to-work call to you.
The standard most employers use is that the employee can come back once at least 24 hours have passed with no fever (without fever-reducing medication) and symptoms are mild and improving. Write the criterion into a policy and apply it the same way every time; inconsistent return-to-work decisions are what create exposure.
Healthcare is the exception. CDPH guidance for healthcare personnel is stricter: no return until at least three days after symptom onset and 24 hours fever-free, with masking in patient-care areas for 10 days after symptoms began. Clinical employers follow that timeline, and some high-risk workplaces borrow it as a benchmark.
Pay and Leave
California’s COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave expired on December 31, 2022, and the exclusion pay requirement from the Emergency Temporary Standards expired in February 2023. Nothing has replaced either one. You are not required to pay the employee extra wages because the reason they’re out is COVID.
What the employee can use is regular California paid sick leave. Under current law, you must provide at least 40 hours or five days per year, whichever is greater, and that leave covers the employee’s own illness. If they have hours available, they can draw on them for the time they’re out.
Workers’ compensation is still available if the employee believes they caught the virus at work, but the rebuttable presumption under Labor Code Section 3212.86 that made those claims easier to establish was repealed on January 1, 2024. A claim now has to be proved as a work-related occupational disease under the standard rules.
Federal OSHA: Log It and Report Hospitalizations
Federal recordkeeping sits on top of state law and did not expire. A COVID-19 case belongs on the OSHA Form 300 log when three things are true: the employee has a confirmed diagnosis, the illness is work-related under 29 CFR 1904.5, and it involves a recording trigger such as days away from work, restricted duty, or medical treatment beyond first aid under 29 CFR 1904.7.
If a work-related case results in hospitalization, you have 24 hours to report it to OSHA. Reports go to the nearest OSHA office, through the 24-hour hotline at 1-800-321-6742, or online. A work-related fatality must be reported within eight hours.
Keep the Medical Information Separate
The ADA still governs how you handle anything you learn about the employee’s health. The positive test result, any related diagnosis, and any accommodation paperwork go in a confidential medical file, not the standard personnel folder. Limit access to people with a legitimate reason to see it, such as the HR staffer handling an accommodation or the safety officer tracking workplace hazards. This duty does not expire with Section 3205.
Notifying Coworkers and Updating Your IIPP
The old Section 3205 rules on close-contact definitions, notification timelines, and employer-paid testing for exposed workers are gone, and no successor regulation replaced them. What remains is the general duty to maintain a safe workplace under Labor Code Section 6400 and to run an effective Injury and Illness Prevention Program under Title 8, Section 3203.
If COVID-19 is a recognized hazard at your worksite — because of a cluster of cases, a congregate setting, or a local surge — the IIPP requires you to evaluate the risk and put controls in place. Depending on circumstances, that can mean telling coworkers who shared space with the positive employee, improving ventilation, reinstating masking, or allowing temporary remote work. Document what triggers these measures and what they involve, so a single positive test doesn’t force you to improvise. Employers who identify a hazard and do nothing about it are the ones who get cited.