With mask mandates rapidly disappearing across the country – only Hawaii is still under an indefinite mask mandate – Americans are taking it upon their own shoulders to remain healthy as the COVID pandemic continues on.
And while daily case diagnoses are down drastically from where they were just a month ago, a different statistic is on the rise: Americans calling out sick from work. In January, 2.3 percent of the American work force was home sick, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — three times higher than a usual pre-pandemic month.
This despite the United States remaining one of just 11 countries worldwide that doesn’t offer all workers mandatory sick leave across the board as a basic right.
The Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that around 33.6 million workers in America do not have paid sick leave at their jobs.
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Even the paid sick leave program passed by Congress at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 for workers battling the coronavirus has long since expired, and with COVID still lingering, some lawmakers are beginning to worry that workers without paid sick leave will continue to go to work even if positive for the coronavirus, causing the pandemic to lengthen even further.
The New York Times reports Democrats are pursuing a new round of COVID paid sick leave in the spending bill to fund the government, the deadline for which has been extended to March 11. "They are also considering a stand-alone paid sick leave bill, or the inclusion of paid leave in a Covid relief package for businesses," the Times report says, adding that the White House supports those efforts
With President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address looming on Tuesday, a collective of Democrats in Congress is urging Biden to include a proposal for mandatory sick leave in his speech and to push the new law through by year’s end.
So far it remains to be seen whether that proposal will indeed make its way into Biden’s address, but pandemic expert John M. Barry of Tulane University says history shows productivity will continue to suffer as long as COVID continues to flourish in the populace.
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Barry told ABC News some of the worst outbreaks of the influenza pandemic of 1918 occurred once public health restrictions were removed and people were no longer required to mask.
Plus, “there will be another variant,” Barry warned.