Appendix II: Draft template letter for employers to send employees

Important note: To meet their duty to facilitate compliance with testing and medical examination requirements, PCBUs/employers must provide specific information to their workers, which advises them of: • The requirement to undergo testing and medical examination; and • The testing period that applies to each affected person. This draft letter does not meet this requirement, as it is not specific to the individual worker – it is provided to assist PCBUs/employers with communicating the new Order requirements to their workers only. Dear [Name of employee] The COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Order 2020 (Required Testing Order) requires certain workers at higher-risk of workplace exposure to COVID-19 to undergo regular testing. As of 11.59 pm on 21 April 2021 changes have been made to the Required Testing Order to further strengthen the border testing regime. These changes are in response to the new community cases detected in Auckland in February 2021, and the presence in New Zealand of more transmissible variants of COVID-19, first identified in the UK, South Africa and Brazil. Workers in many roles have been required to be tested for some time. Workers in these roles continue to need to be tested. We thank you for your continued cooperation if you work in one of these roles. The changes to the Required Testing Order mean that persons who perform work in the following role at or around airports must now also be tested every 14 days: 1. Workers who handle affected items that have been removed from an affected aircraft within 24 hours of the item being removed from the affected aircraft, and who have contact with a member of a group of air border workers or officials who is already required to be tested under the Required Testing Order, while both are working. Note: o An affected aircraft is an aircraft (other than an aircraft undertaking a QFT flight) which has arrived from a location outside New Zealand. o An affected item is an item that: ➢ is not cargo or freight, and ➢ has been removed for cleaning, disposal and/or re-use on an aircraft. ❖ In the aviation context, “freight” refers to goods which are not passengers’ baggage and are transported in an aircraft’s cargo compartment and not in the cabin.

❖ “Re-use” refers to items that are to be returned to an aircraft after being removed from the same or a different aircraft. o “Have contact with”, in relation to contact with a member of a group of air border workers or border officials, means: ➢ having face-to-face contact within 2 metres of each other for 15 minutes or more; or

➢ being in a confined space within 2 metres of each other for 15 minutes or more. o “Members of a group” are all those air border workers and officials who are already required to be tested under the Required Testing Order. o If you are a third-party contractor servicing aircraft who meets the conditions described above, you will be included in this category. 2. Baggage handlers who work at affected airports and who handle baggage from affected aircraft. 3. Persons (other than excluded airport persons) who spend no more than 15 minutes in an enclosed space on board an affected aircraft. 4. All landside workers who interact with relevant aircrew members. 5. Workers at accommodation services (other than private dwellinghouses) where relevant aircrew members are self-isolating. In addition to these new groups of air border workers, the frequency of required testing has been increased for some groups of border workers identified as being at higher risk of exposure because of the nature of their work and interaction with potentially infectious persons. The following groups of air border workers, either previously on a 14-day testing cycle or not required to be tested regularly, are now required to be tested every seven days, beginning 22 April 2021: 1. Health practitioners carrying out work airside. 2. Health practitioners working at accommodation services (other than private dwellinghouses) where relevant aircrew members are self-isolating.

• Note, the Required Testing Order uses the definition of ‘health practitioner’ from the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 (section 5): “A person who is, or is deemed to be, registered with a an authority as a practitioner of a particular health profession.” More information about the groups of workers required to be tested can be found in the accompanying FAQ sheet. [Include this sentence if the employer is attaching the FAQ sheet.] If you perform work in an affected role, you must get tested, unless you have a particular physical or other need that a suitably qualified health practitioner at the testing site determines would make it inappropriate for you to be tested. We will be providing further information on how and where to get tested. [The employer can insert specific requirements applying to the worker here.] The Order requires that, as your employer, we must notify you of the requirement to be tested and keep certain written records that enable us to check that you are being tested. The records we are required to keep are: • Your full legal name and date of birth • Your telephone number • The testing period that applies to you • The dates on which you have undergone testing and medical examination in accordance with the testing period that applies to you

• If you are exempted from testing and medical examination on medical grounds, the testing period to which the exemption relates. You will need to provide us with this information, or enable us to access this information, so that these records can be kept. You will receive further information about how this information will be collected at our workplace [or employer can insert information here]. If you have questions about how you should provide this information, please discuss these with me. The purpose of these mandatory testing requirements is to ensure that the measures we have in place to keep you safe are working and to keep COVID-19 out of New Zealand communities. Please continue to use your PPE properly, practise good hygiene, use physical distancing where possible and stay alert to the symptoms of COVID-19. You play a vital role in keeping our workplace, communities and whānau safe. I thank you for your efforts so far and for your ongoing cooperation with the testing requirements. Your sincerely [Name of employer] Recommended attachment: FAQs drawn from this guidance