In 2018 the United Nations General Assembly declared June 7th “World Food Safety Day”. Each year, World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations take the lead in this effort to highlight the importance of food safety and “inspire action to help prevent, detect and manage foodborne risks, contributing to food security, human health, economic prosperity, agriculture, market access, tourism, and sustainable development.”
On January 21, 2021, President Biden issued an “Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety.” In response to this executive order, on January 29th, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a guidance “Protecting Workers: Guidance on Mitigating and Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 in the Workplace.” While this guidance has not yet become a requirement, OSHA is investigating an emergency standard that correlates with this new guidance.
In October 2020, the American Dental Association passed a resolution (91H-2020) which states that dentists have the “knowledge and skills to administer critical vaccinations that prevent life- or health-threatening conditions”. ADA president, Daniel J. Klemmedson believes, and dentists agree, that enlisting these professionals greatly increases the rate of COVID-19 vaccinations. Governor Gavin Newsom gave the okay for dentists in California to distribute the vaccine, in response to the low rate of inoculations there.
The closing of businesses because of the COVID-19 shutdown has been devastating to the economy and to citizens who now have no means of providing for their families. For those business owners with enough money to stay afloat, this time has been an opportunity to re-tool, re-focus and determine how best to proceed in this new environment. Another group of businesses, meat and poultry processors, for example, hasn’t had down time because they have continued operating. Some have even experienced massive increases in the demand for their products.
In a matter of months, the Coronavirus has dealt a major blow to the United States, and we may never be the same. Major institutions are at the point of unravelling. School and university administrators all over the country are debating whether to open their campuses to students in the fall. Sports matches are currently being played in arenas without fans, if at all. Jobless claims have continued to rise. To make matters worse, just when the shelter-in-place orders were lifted and we thought (hoped) the country was on the mend, an attempt to re-open was met with a second wave of virus cases.