The MPX virus has wreaked financial havoc for workers who have little paid time off to recover from illness. Healing from painful lesions can take weeks — much longer than the three days of sick leave that California generally requires from employers.
But for others, “if public health requires workers to isolate for the general good ... then the public needs to compensate those workers to ensure that this is not a ticket to joblessness and homelessness,” he said. “Otherwise people will not report they’re sick.”disproportionately affected
Marquiette said a construction foreman quizzed him about how he got the virus. He said he didn’t know. “You have people looking at you crazy,” said the worker, who is heterosexual. “The first thing coming to their mind is something negative, and I couldn’t answer the questions that they asked me.” “If you had COVID, you could be honest about what’s going on,” said Paul, who is gay. But even though he works at an LGBTQ-friendly company, he didn’t want to tell co-workers he had MPX and feel them silently speculating about his sex life.
However, if their work does not involve physical contact or “settings of concern” such as schools, health facilities and homeless shelters — and virtual work is not possible — the state guidance says they can go back to work a few days after their fever or respiratory symptoms have disappeared, new lesions have stopped popping up for two days, and any lesions that cannot be covered are fully healed.
Aragón urged people to take advantage of any local programs that counties and others had already developed to support people amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Los Angeles County, for instance, is offering isolation housing in motels for people who are unhoused or have nowhere to safely isolate in their home during an MPX infection, according to its public health department.
They urged the governor to expand temporary eligibility under the state disability insurance program to cover workers who do not contribute to it, “in much the same way that eligibility for unemployment insurance was expanded during COVID-19.”