HJAR Jul/Aug 2020

26 JUL / AUG 2020  I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS PHARMACISTS managers “have avoided giving us any notifi- cations when someone gets sick,”said Fram, who stays put at the Walgreens in upper Manhattan, “it’s such a tiny district that we all know each other’s business.” Floaters said that they are unaware of what’s happened not only before they’ve come into a store, but also after they’ve de- parted. In one case, a floater stopped working at a store, and days later an employee there fell sick; the floater said he was not informed at the time and still doesn’t know whether he was also exposed or even the source of the exposure. “Because you’re not on a conference call or on a mailing list with a core group of em- ployees and managers, you don’t receive the same regular communications that others would,” the Dallas floater said. “You are re- lying on others to play telephone with you about what’s going on.” When employees notify CVS orWalgreens that they are presumed to have COVID-19 or have tested positive, they are advised to quarantine for two weeks, for which they can receive paid leave. The CDC advises that workplaces then identify and contact any in- dividual who “has been within 6 feet of the infected employee for a prolonged period of time.” In practice, however, each workplace exercises significant discretion to define what prolonged means and just how risky the ex- posure was. One floater in Ohio described receiving a last-minute change to her schedule and showing up to a store where co-workers told her that there had been a confirmed case. “Everything was done secretively and the safety of the employees [was] endangered,” the floater wrote in an email to ProPublica in April. “If the company is sending people to work in a store that recently has a posi- tive case, they should tell the people what to expect. They should, at least, tell them what happened there and advise them to wear masks or take precautions.” n