Oregon businesses that choose to offer mask-free shopping for people who are fully inoculated against COVID-19 will likely be required to inspect each customer’s vaccination card and check the dates of individual shots, a top state health official said Friday.
That’s the protocol the Oregon Health Authority is expected to adopt when it issues written guidance for businesses in the days ahead. Businesses that don’t want the hassle still will be allowed to require masks regardless of vaccination status.
Dr. Dean Sidelinger, the state health officer and epidemiologist, said verifying vaccinations will be key to ensuring the safety of customers and employees. But, he acknowledged, the shift in federal mask guidance marks a “radical change” and likely will lead to some headaches for local stores.
“Businesses have a choice about which system to implement,” he said, “and individuals have a choice.”
Oregon is scrambling to issue new formal guidance for mask-wearing after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that fully vaccinated people generally do not need to wear masks or physically distance. Masks have been required in most circumstances across all of Oregon since July 1 and local officials are now working on the fly to develop nuanced rules covering a multitude of circumstances.
Gov. Kate Brown on Thursday announced masks would not be required for fully vaccinated people in most “public settings” but state officials have yet to define what that means. Someone is considered fully vaccinated if 14 days have passed since the only dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine or the second dose of Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.
Oregon officials appear to be using the unmasking option as an incentive to increase vaccinations statewide, while saying their plan should not violate individual privacy rights under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
Sidelinger on Friday said people who decide they do not want to wear masks in a store would voluntarily share their vaccination status, otherwise they would be required to wear masks.
“That is not a violation of HIPAA or privacy since they’re voluntarily disclosing that information,” he said.
Sidelinger said he envisioned store staff at participating businesses greeting customers at entrances to ensure vaccination status is verified. Businesses are already generally required to monitor for social distancing and mask requirements, he said, and “we would anticipate that it would be a shift of how people are doing their jobs.”
Sidelinger did not explicitly address if the honor system for customers would be allowed but said he envisioned a more rigorous verification process by store workers.
“Right now I would anticipate that that would be seeing a card with the individual’s name, the vaccines they’ve gotten and the date and where they’ve gotten them,” he said. “That could be a picture of the vaccine card or a record from their provider on their phone.”
Verifying vaccination status could prove contentious, however, as viral videos of confrontations over masking requirements were commonplace during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
Miles Eshaia, a spokesperson for UFCW Local 555, which represents grocery store workers at Fred Meyer, Safeway and Albertsons, criticized the state for failing to consider the burden on frontline workers.
“Once again, the OHA has put essential employees in the position of enforcers of public policy without giving them the tools to protect themselves or the public,” Eshaia said. “Telling essential employees to be the mask police and asking customers for their medical information puts them in harm’s way and is insulting after months of ignoring the needs and safety of the people who put food on our tables. Oregon’s essential employees deserve better than they are getting from their government.”
Eshaia said he expects most grocery stores will continue requiring that customers wear masks, rather than ask employees to verify vaccination cards. Fred Meyer and QFC’s parent company, Kroger Co., announced Friday that it would keep mask mandates in place for now.
Sidelinger acknowledged the new guidance could put workers in a difficult position.
“That’s why I’m asking and hoping that Oregonians will continue to do what’s right,” Sidelinger said.
Sidelinger said new modeling shows coronavirus cases may decline in the weeks ahead, with the potential for 420 to 590 cases a day – below the current daily average of about 650. But Oregon is in the top ten nationally for per capita spread in the past two weeks, and cases are not declining as quickly as officials would like.
That means people who are unvaccinated and lie about their status to avoid wearing a mask could not only put themselves at risk, but others, if they are infected without symptoms and unwittingly spread the virus, Sidelinger said.
“I hope that no one out there is dishonest,” he said. “People have choices now about how they want to protect themselves and their communities, and we’ll hope that they’ll do that.”
-- Brad Schmidt; bschmidt@oregonian.com; 503-294-7628; @_brad_schmidt