That’s the situation that every company hopes to never have to face, to have a positive employee at Covid-19. According to the latest INAIL report, updated to 31 December 2020 and just presented, however, coronavirus infections in the workplace have now exceeded the 131,000 threshold since the beginning of the pandemic and to date it is likely to have grown further. An eventuality, therefore, much more concrete than one might think and which can endanger the health of workers, but not only.

“The impasse – explains the lawyer Irene Pudda of Rödl & Partner, expert in privacy & labor compliance – is due to the fact that the employer is not authorized to communicate to colleagues the name of a positive employee. The company is required to provide the ATS with the necessary information so that the latter can perform the tasks envisaged by the emergency regulations and, at the same time, has the right to ask possible close contacts to leave the company premises as a precaution, but it is the ATS that has the power to contact the workers and then apply the appropriate quarantine measures.”

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In doing so, the risk is that companies leave entire departments or offices operational with the danger of spreading the virus, not only among employees who have been in direct contact with the infected person, but also among their family members and acquaintances.

“Tuttavia non si può fare diversamente – chiarisce l’avv. Pudda di Rödl & Partner – La procedura è volta a tutelare la privacy del lavoratore risultato positivo al coronavirus. Certo, come è facile immaginare, procedere alla disinfezione della postazione di lavoro, delle attrezzature utilizzate e degli spazi comuni frequentati dal dipendente, domandare ai possibili contatti stretti di lasciare cautelativamente i locali aziendali, nonché isolare o chiudere gli uffici in cui il dipendente ha lavorato garantendone allo stesso tempo la totale riservatezza è di difficile applicazione.”