Los Alamos National Laboratory will end on-site COVID-19 testing in July and shift most of the responsibility for preventing the spread of the disease on site to employees, according to a memo from lab director Thomas Mason.
“Although regional case rates are expected to decrease over the next several weeks, public health experts predict COVID-19 will remain in the community at varying levels for some time to come,” Mason wrote Monday in the memo, the text of which the Exchange Monitor read. “As a result, Los Alamos National Laboratory is implementing a long-term approach to managing COVID-19 cases.”
On-site testing at the lab, which was one of the first National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) sites to offer the service during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, will end July 1, Mason wrote. Los Alamos Occupational Medicine will also stop giving out free at-home COVID-19 test kits to employees, according to the memo.
“If you are exposed to the virus or have COVID-like symptoms after July 8, please follow the latest CDC guidelines, inform your line manager, and consider consulting your personal physician,” the memo reads.
Los Alamos has performed tens of thousands of on-site COVID-19 tests since 2020, according to data lab spokespersons have shared with the Monitor. The lab, managed for the NNSA by contractor Triad National Security, did more than 10,000 tests in 2020 and an additional 20,000-plus in 2021.
Los Alamos’ COVID-19 policies were among the strictest in the Nuclear Security Enterprise. In early May, the lab returned to normal operations after more than two years of maximum telework. At that time, Los Alamos also allowed unvaccinated employees, some of whom had been placed on leave-without-pay after receiving a religious exemption to the lab’s vaccine mandate, to return to the site.
Unvaccinated people working on site still faced some strict requirements to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Los Alamos was the first major NNSA site to require a COVID-19 vaccination for its employees, rolling out its mandate in August 2021, about a month before the Joe Biden administration, in an executive order later overturned by a federal court, made vaccinations mandatory for federal contractors.
