While not divulging details yet, the manager of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state says the complex will loosen its COVID-19 protocols for fully-vaccinated workers next week.
The relaxed rules will technically go into effect Friday, which is not a workday at the site, Brian Vance, the top federal boss at the DOE cleanup property, said both in a Tuesday notice to employees and a Wednesday appearance before the Hanford Advisory Board.
It will be “a soft launch” of the revised guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Vance told the advisory board during its online meeting. Signs will be updated on Friday. “We have our procedures approved,” and contractors are developing their new training practices, he added.
Vance paused implementation of the relaxed CDC guidance on May 24, saying he wanted “ to allow federal, state, and local policies and guidelines relative to the revised CDC guidance to stabilize.”
To implement the new Hanford Site guidance, “each employer will provide their respective workforce with specific guidance over the next few days,” Vance said in his Tuesday memo.
“Per state requirements, employees who have been vaccinated and wish to not wear a mask at work need to fill out a form attesting to their vaccination status,” according to a memo, obtained by Weapons Complex Monitor, that was sent to contractor employees Wednesday. Workers also have the option to show a copy of their vaccine card, according to the memo.
Vance told the advisory board that Hanford’s healthcare contractor, HPMC Occupational Medical Services, will soon have fully vaccinated about 1,000 workers onsite at the plutonium complex. That translates to about 10% of the Hanford workforce. In previous appearances before the board, Vance has said many employees have got injections offsite at various providers around the Tri-Cities area.
Hanford continues to use a “60/40 split” with 60% of its workforce onsite and the rest working remotely, Vance said, adding that this setup will remain in place after the mask rules are slackened.
As of early Friday morning, more than 33.4 million people nationally had contracted COVID-19 since the pandemic began in the United States and almost 599,000 had died, according to an online tracker run by Johns Hopkins University.
