Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Nuclear Security Administration stopped keeping track of active cases of the disease among personnel who don’t report to work regularly at the agency’s labs, plants or sites.
The change left the agency with 59 confirmed active cases of COVID-19 among employees working on site, a spokesperson at National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) headquarters in Washington said Friday. That’s more than an eight-fold decrease compared with the beginning of the month.
“DOE/NNSA is now tracking active cases for only employees working onsite,” the spokesperson said. “Employees teleworking full-time are not included in this count.”
NNSA stopped including teleworkers in its accounting count the week of March 14, the spokesperson said Friday. At the beginning of March, around half the employees of the three NNSA labs were still allowed to telecommute. Also around the beginning of March, the NNSA reported nearly 500 confirmed active cases of COVID-19.
The agency did not say why it changed its accounting methods.
Even before the switch, however, there was a steep decline in active COVID cases across the NNSA enterprise, matching the ebb of the winter omicron wave nationally. From January to February, confirmed active cases dropped 70% at NNSA. The decline prompted a loosening of COVID safety rules within the enterprise, including at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which has some of the strictest pandemic protocols of any site.
Meanwhile, NNSA also said this week it had recorded one COVID-related employee fatality in March, as of Friday. That brought the agency’s total to 38 so far since January 2020, the month healthcare and government officials started tracking the domestic spread of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, in the Washington region, DOE federal employees were largely returning to work on site in the district and the surrounding suburbs. The agency shifted out of maximum telework last week.
