Quarantine Requirements for Employees of Providers of Vital Service Must Be Alleviated

Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has sent a proposal to the ministries regarding changing the quarantine requirements for the providers of vital services. The quickly rising number of infected persons is leading us to a situation where providers of vital services are no longer able to provide the service and therefore, in the Chamber’s opinion, the quarantine requirements must be alleviated for the employees of the providers of vital services who do not have Covid symptoms. 

‘According to the data of the Health Insurance Fund, 55,665 persons are absent from work at the moment based on sickness leave or care leave, which is nearly 10% of all workers. And when we look at the record number of infections last week, we can presume that the number of persons temporarily absent from work will not be decreasing in the coming weeks, on the contrary, it will significantly increase,’ said Mait Palts, Director General of the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. 

Therefore, it is very real that in the nearest future, situations where employers do not have sufficient number of employees to continue their activities, will become more frequent. A situation with especially grave consequences will arise when a provider of a vital service is unable to provide the service because their employees are either sick or quarantined. To prevent dangerous situations where, for example, district heating of a town is interrupted or there are disturbances in power supply in the middle of winter because there are not employees with critical skills, the Chamber has made a proposal to alleviate quarantine requirements for the employees of the providers of vital services who lack symptoms of the Covid virus. 

Palts said that employees of vital services could enjoy the same exceptions as decided by the Government of the Republic on 03.02.2022 in relation to healthcare workers. ‘It should be possible for the employees of the providers of vital services to, if absolutely necessary, return to work before the end of their quarantine period if keeping a vital service going cannot be ensured in any other manner,’ he added.  

Palts emphasised that providers of vital services are responsible and knowledgeable enough of how to apply care measures and monitor their performance. ‘In other activities the current quarantine requirements would still be applicable for the said workers and entrepreneurs will also ensure that the symptoms of illness of an employee would be gone, the employee would be capable of work and all necessary caution measures for limiting the spread of virus would be taken,’ said Palts and added that the providers of vital services are clearly defined in legal acts, which means that it is a small circle of employees for whom the exception would be applicable.  

In the Chamber’s opinion, implementing the proposal as soon as possible is urgently necessary in order to ensure functioning of vital services, because it is not probable that the infection rates would turn to fast decline and therefore the problem arising is no longer unrealistic or theoretical, but a real risk to the functioning of the society.