If your workplace is the site of a major coronavirus outbreak, dont expect your employer to tell the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Employers are legally required to notify OSHA promptly whenever a worker ends up hospitalized due to a work-related injury or illness. But the way the Trump administration is choosing to read the rules, there is almost no scenario in which a COVID-19 hospitalization must be reported to the agency.

Workplace safety experts are concerned the lack of employer reporting will leave the federal government unable to track large workplace outbreaks and intervene to stop the spread. Some of the worst COVID-19 clusters in the country have revolved around workplaces like meatpacking plants and nursing homes.

This is going to lead to the further spread of COVID-19 at work and out into the public, said Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA official now with the nonprofit National Employment Law Project. It means the agency will never find out where there are serious outbreaks, and will never be able to hold employers accountable.

In 2014, the Obama-era OSHA issued a regulation stating that whenever a worker is hospitalized, suffers an amputation or loses an eye, the employer has to report the incident to OSHA within 24 hours by phone or email. When an employer learns of a work-related death, OSHA must be notified within eight hours.

But in updated guidance issued on Sept. 30, the Trump administration made clear the rule wouldnt apply to most COVID-19 cases. It pointed to a line in the regulation that says you must only report the event to OSHA if it occurs within twenty-four hours of the work-related incident.

Under the administrations interpretation, work-related incident means an exposure to [coronavirus] in the workplace. So for the employer to be required to notify OSHA, a worker would have to be exposed to COVID-19, get sick and end up hospitalized all within 24 hours. Thats not how this virus works, and the change all but ensures far less reporting.

The new policy appears to be a reversal of the agencys guidance in July , when it said employers had to report hospitalizations regardless of when the exposure might have happened.

Peg Seminario, who directed the AFL-CIOs workplace safety program before retiring last year, said OSHAs earlier interpretation was the right one. She called applying the 24-hour timeframe to an infectious disease wrongheaded.

It makes absolutely no sense for the reporting of COVID-19, she said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that a person infected with COVID-19 can show symptoms anywhere from two to 14 days after infection, and typically not until five days later. It often takes even longer for someones condition to deteriorate enough to warrant a trip to the hospital.

David Michaels, who led OSHA under President Barack Obama , said the Trump administration is misinterpreting the rule his team enacted. Michaels noted that in most situations, an employer couldnt pinpoint exactly when workers were exposed to COVID-19, making it impossible to know when to start the clock.

He said the new policy fits the Trump administrations broader pattern of denial during the pandemic: If you arent aware of the infections, then the infections arent happening .

Its an outrageous distortion, said Michaels, who just co-authored a report for the Century Foundation think tank detailing OSHAs shortcomings amid the pandemic. This is OSHA saying they dont want to know where outbreaks are happening.