COVID Return to Work Guidelines: California Isolation, Pay, and Leave

If you work in California and are trying to figure out when you can come back after a COVID infection, the short version is this: the state’s dedicated COVID workplace rules expired on February 3, 2025, so the current COVID return-to-work guidelines in California come from California Department of Public Health recommendations layered on top of your employer’s general safety program. You can return once you’ve been fever-free for at least 24 hours without fever-reducing medication and your other symptoms are mild and improving. There is no longer a fixed exclusion period, no state-mandated COVID pay, and no requirement that your employer offer you remote work while you isolate.¹

The rest of what you need to know sits around that answer: masking after you return, how you’ll get paid (or won’t), what happens if symptoms drag on, and what your employer is still legally required to do.

When You Can Return to Work After a Positive Test

Cal/OSHA no longer sets a mandatory number of days you have to stay out. What remains is CDPH guidance, which Cal/OSHA points employers to and which most employers now use as their baseline:²

If you tested positive and had symptoms, stay home until at least 24 hours have passed with no fever (without using fever-reducing medication) and your other symptoms are mild and improving.
If you tested positive but never developed symptoms, no exclusion from the workplace is required. If symptoms show up later, the 24-hour fever-free rule starts from that point.
If a local or state health officer issues a specific isolation or quarantine order that covers you, that order controls and you cannot return until it is lifted.³

Under the old regulation, these standards were enforceable mandates with citation risk for employers. Now they function as best-practice guidance, and many employers have written them into their Injury and Illness Prevention Program. An employer who forces a visibly sick employee to work could still face enforcement under California’s general workplace safety duty, but the path is less direct than it was.⁴

Masking Once You’re Back

CDPH recommends that anyone who tested positive wear a mask indoors around other people for 10 days after symptom onset, or from the date of the positive test if no symptoms appeared. Day zero is the day symptoms started or the day you tested.⁵ You can stop earlier if you take two antigen tests at least one day apart and both come back negative.

This is now a recommendation rather than a Cal/OSHA mandate. But if your employer has built COVID protocols into their IIPP, they can require masking as a workplace safety rule, and refusing could be a disciplinary issue under the employer’s own policies.

Getting Paid While You’re Out

The special COVID paid leave programs are gone. California’s COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave expired on December 31, 2022, and the separate Cal/OSHA “Exclusion Pay” requirement expired in February 2023. No COVID-specific paid leave program exists in the state right now.⁶

What you can use instead:

California Paid Sick Leave. If you’ve worked for your employer at least 30 days, you earn one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked, with a minimum of 40 hours (five days) available per year. This leave explicitly covers self-isolation due to potential COVID-19 exposure.⁶
PTO or vacation. Your employer may require you to use accrued vacation or general PTO during a COVID absence.
Unpaid time. Once you exhaust paid options, the rest of the absence may be unpaid unless another law (like FMLA or state disability leave) applies.

One distinction matters. Under California law, the choice to use accrued paid sick leave belongs to the employee. Your employer cannot force you to drain your sick leave bank for a COVID absence, though they can require you to use vacation or general PTO.

Working From Home While You Isolate

California law does not require your employer to let you work from home while you’re isolating after a positive test. If your job can be done remotely and your employer agrees, remote work lets you avoid burning paid leave. But that is a courtesy, not a right.

The analysis changes if you have a disability. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, telework may qualify as a reasonable accommodation when a COVID-related condition meets the definition of a disability.⁷ A short, run-of-the-mill infection generally won’t clear that bar.

If Your Symptoms Don’t Go Away

A standard COVID case that resolves in a few days doesn’t usually trigger accommodation duties. Long COVID is different. When symptoms like brain fog, chronic fatigue, joint pain, or shortness of breath persist and substantially limit a major life activity, the condition may qualify as a disability under the ADA and FEHA. If it does, your employer must engage in an interactive process to identify a reasonable accommodation unless doing so would cause undue hardship.⁷

The EEOC has flagged accommodations tied to specific long COVID symptoms:

Brain fog: a quiet workspace, noise-cancelling devices, or blocks of uninterrupted work time.
Headaches: alternative lighting and reduced screen glare.
Joint pain or shortness of breath: rest breaks, or removal of physically demanding tasks that aren’t essential to the job.
Fatigue: a flexible schedule or telework.

Your employer picks among effective options. You can ask for telework, but if an equally effective in-office accommodation exists, the employer can offer that instead. The fact that your employer allowed remote work during the pandemic doesn’t, on its own, entitle you to it now. You need a current, disability-related limitation that requires it.⁷

When COVID Qualifies for FMLA or CFRA Leave

A mild case that clears in a day or two typically doesn’t qualify for protected leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act or California’s Family Rights Act. Those laws cover “serious health conditions,” which generally means either an overnight hospital stay or incapacity lasting more than three consecutive days combined with ongoing medical treatment.⁸

A severe case that puts you in the hospital, or that keeps you out more than three days with a doctor prescribing follow-up care, is likely to meet the threshold. Long COVID with recurring episodes of incapacity requiring treatment at least twice a year can qualify as a chronic serious health condition. If your situation fits, you’re entitled to up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave per year, with health insurance maintained during the leave. Eligibility requires 12 months of employment with your employer and at least 1,250 hours worked in the year before leave begins.

What Your Employer Still Has to Do

Even without COVID-specific rules, your employer’s duties haven’t vanished. Every California employer must provide a safe and healthful workplace under Labor Code section 6400 and must maintain an Injury and Illness Prevention Program under Title 8, Section 3203. If an employer identifies COVID-19 as a hazard at their site, they are required to evaluate and correct unsafe conditions or practices tied to it.⁹

One piece of the old regulation still has teeth: recordkeeping under subsection 3205(j), which remains enforceable through February 3, 2026. Until then, employers must track each COVID-19 case with the employee’s name, contact information, occupation, work location, last day at the workplace, and date of positive test or diagnosis. Records must be kept for two years beyond the required period and provided to local health departments, CDPH, Cal/OSHA, or NIOSH on request.³

Retaliation protections also remain. Under Section 11(c) of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act, employers cannot retaliate against workers who report a COVID infection or unsafe conditions, request protective equipment, or file an OSHA complaint. Federal retaliation complaints have a 30-day filing window.¹⁰ California Labor Code section 6310 separately prohibits retaliation for raising health and safety concerns or reporting work-related illness, and section 6311 gives employees the right to refuse work that would violate an occupational safety standard and create a real and apparent hazard.

What Your Employer No Longer Has to Do

Because so much changed in February 2025, it’s worth being clear about what expired, so you don’t return expecting protections that aren’t there. As of that date, California employers are no longer required to:¹

Individually notify employees of close contacts in the workplace.
Provide free COVID testing to employees after workplace exposure or during an outbreak.
Exclude employees from the workplace for specific mandatory periods after a positive test, though employers who treat COVID as a hazard in their IIPP may still write exclusion rules of their own.
Follow the specific outbreak protocols that once required weekly testing when three or more cases appeared in an exposed group within a 14-day period.
Pay exclusion pay to employees removed from work for COVID exposure. That obligation ended even earlier, in February 2023.

These requirements could come back if Cal/OSHA adopts new standards during a future surge, but nothing along those lines is currently pending. Employers who choose to keep stricter COVID rules through their own IIPP can enforce those rules as workplace policy even without a Cal/OSHA regulation behind them.

1
California Department of Industrial Relations. Cal/OSHA’s COVID-19 Prevention Non-Emergency Standards End
2
California Department of Industrial Relations. A Worker May Be Sick or Exposed to COVID-19
3
California Code of Regulations, Title 8. Section 3205 COVID-19 Prevention
4
California Legislative Information. California Labor Code 6400
5
California Department of Public Health. COVID-19 Isolation Guidance
6
California Department of Industrial Relations. COVID-19 Resources – What Are Paid Sick Leave Options for Workers?
7
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. What You Should Know About COVID-19 and the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and Other EEO Laws
8
U.S. Department of Labor. FMLA Frequently Asked Questions
9
California Department of Industrial Relations. Cal/OSHA COVID-19 Guidance and Resources
10
OSHA. Filing Whistleblower Complaints Related to COVID-19