COVID On-site Work FAQs and Resources

If you are sick with any potential illness, stay home. Contact your doctor and ask if you should be tested for COVID-19 and follow the guidance provided. If you are enrolled in Husky Coronavirus Testing, report your symptoms in your daily survey. Protect your health and the health of others.

Yes. UW personnel while on-site, must continue to follow the guidance in the University’s COVID-19 Prevention Plan (pdf) and your department’s COVID-19 prevention plan.

It takes up to two weeks to develop antibodies against the COVID-19 virus. You are considered “fully vaccinated” two weeks after the second dose of the two-dose vaccine, or two weeks after a single-dose primary vaccine.

Yes. To protect the health of our community, the University of Washington does require faculty and other academic personnel, staff, student employees, and trainees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to work on our campuses or within our facilities COVID-19 vaccination a condition of employment – Return to on-site work (uw.edu). This is consistent with COVID-19 vaccination requirement | Novel coronavirus information (washington.edu) our requirement that students be vaccinated and follows the workplace requirements from the Washington Department of Labor and Industries. Similar to the student requirement, employees will be allowed to seek exemptions for medical, religious, or philosophical reasons.

No. Supervisors should treat vaccination status like any other personal medical or healthcare issue. If you think your team includes positions where vaccination is an occupational health requirement, please confirm with your department leadership and Executive Office HR before pursuing the issue.

No. Do not treat vaccinated and unvaccinated employees differently. Regardless of vaccination status, all employees who return to onsite work must follow both the UW and the department’s COVID-19 prevention plans.

Most departments, if operationally allowable, have implemented some form of hybrid telework policy. Departments are expected to have updated telework agreements on file with Executive Office HR if your department continues either 100% telework or hybrid telework. Telework policies and agreements – (uw.edu)

Department leadership has the flexibility to work with their teams on how to incorporate more telework into their operations in ways that are consistent with achieving their department’s missions and business needs. Certain functions should be prioritized for in-person work, including essential and clinical operations, instruction, research, student services, and services provided to the public, as well as the support services that underpin our teaching, research, clinical, and service operations.