Update Applicable to:
All Colorado employers.
What happened?
As announced in late January, the federal public health emergency declarations for COVID-19 will end on May 11. The State of Colorado has been planning for the end of the pandemic emergency for more than a year, authoring the Roadmap to Moving Forward as a way to navigate the changes.
What are the details?
All employers in Colorado have been obligated to provide PHE leave for COVID-19-related absences since January 1, 2021. The law was enacted to address the COVID-19 pandemic and contains broad language applicable to any public health emergency declared by federal, state, or local public health agency. Gov. Polis allowed the Executive Order giving rise to the PHE in Colorado to expire on May 5, 2023. The COVID-19 national PHE is set to expire on May 11, 2023, which will trigger the four-week countdown for supplemental PHE leave. This means that employees may use supplemental PHE leave until June 8, 2023, upon which employers will no longer need to administer such leave.
Four weeks after the state and federal public health emergencies end, employers will no longer be required to provide up to 80 hours of public health emergency leave. They will still need to provide accrued paid sick leave: one hour of paid leave per 30 hours worked, up to 48 hours per year. Coloradans can use this accrued leave to recover from COVID-19 or to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
For more information, please see the links below:
What do employers need to do?
Employers should review and revise existing covid-19 policies specific to the state’s Healthy Families and Workplaces Act (HFWA) in accordance with the above changes.
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