The former FDA chief told CNBC on Monday employers need to have specific plans in place for how to safely return workers to the office or shop floor.
"In an office, you could split your employees, have half of them work at home, half of them come into the office on alternating days," Gottlieb added. "You should continue to encourage telework where you can."
Gottlieb said it's more difficult to maintain social distancing in manufacturing plants and other commercial environments, so employers should accommodate personal protective equipment. "Let people wear masks if they want to." "People need break rooms. They need to come off the shop floor and go into a break room but you might want to have more breaks over the course of the day and stagger them more regularly, so that smaller groups can take breaks so you don't have as much congregating," he advised.
Companies with cafeterias should continue to operate it with added safety precautions, Gottlieb said. "You're better off offering food inside the workplace than watching people go out to a corner deli where they might come into contact with more people and it's harder to social distance." Businesses also need to have a clear response plan in place for workers who test positive "because there will be positive cases," he said. "So you need to have plans in place for how they deal with that, how they do contract tracing in the workplace and get people access to testing."
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