Carpooling and Essential Transport Guidance

This guideline applies to any scenario in which two or more persons who do not live in the same household travel together in the same vehicle for work and/or essential transport purposes, including personal vehicles, taxis and ride shares, and fleet vehicles.

Essential transport includes carpooling for work, co-workers in fleet vehicles, and transport for medical appointments and other essential needs.

If you are transporting a person who is required to self-isolate, follow Transporting Travellers to Self-Isolation Location Guidance.

Guidance on public health measures

Measures required by all businesses, services, and organizations:

• Develop and follow an operational plan detailing how risk of transmission of disease will be mitigated.
• Take every reasonable step to ensure minimal interaction of people (including employees and/or clients) within two metres of each other.
• Take every reasonable step required to prevent employees who are required to self-isolate from entering workplaces.
• Develop and follow an exclusion policy that ensures symptomatic employees are immediately excluded from work activities.
• Ensure enhanced cleaning and disinfection of shared areas and surfaces.
• Ensure hand washing stations or hand sanitizing products are available and accessible to all employees.

Additional measures specific to travelling in vehicles may include:

• If physical distancing cannot be maintained, every effort should be made to ensure some distance between passengers, including limiting the number of persons in a vehicle.
• Clean, when visibly dirty, and then sanitize frequently touched surfaces at least twice a day, and/or after transporting medical patients or passengers with respiratory symptoms. This includes door handles, arm rests, buttons for windows and locks, seatbelts and seatbelt buttons, steering wheel, touch screens, and controls for radios and air conditioning/heating.
• Wash hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, or use hand sanitizer with at least 60% to 80% alcohol if soap and water are not available.
• Have tissues, alcohol-based hand sanitizer, and no-touch disposal receptacles available for persons in the vehicle.
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
• Cough and sneeze into a tissue or sleeve, then throw the tissue in the trash and use hand sanitizer.
• If a person is being transported to or from a hospital or other health care setting and/or is displaying respiratory symptoms, make sure the windows of the vehicle are open and set the air conditioning/heating setting to external airflow.
• Customers should be encouraged to use credit or debit cards if payment is required. Limit contact by allowing customers to scan/tap/swipe their own cards.  If cash must be handled, use hand sanitizer after handling.
• It is strongly recommended that individuals who serve the public continue to wear a mask, given they are not able to determine the vaccine status of their customers.
• For individuals travelling together in private vehicles not associated with a business, service or organization, non-medical masks are strongly encouraged.
• Non-medical masks are not a replacement for any of the above measures.
• Businesses, services and operators must keep daily records of all staff and volunteers; and for riders, at minimum, one person per household and the number of individuals per household present.
  • This can be done with a responsible person completing attendance on site or electronically with verification on site.
  • Records including the first and last names and phone number should be kept for one month to facilitate contact tracing in the event of an outbreak.
  • Operations should have an internal process in place to quickly retrieve these records, should the records be needed, even on weekends.
  • These records should be stored in a safe, secure location for one month after creation of the records and then disposed of using a secure destruction method to maintain the confidentiality of participants. For paper records, secure destruction means, at minimum, cross-cut shredding.
  • Additional guidance on records for contact tracing:
    • ensure to capture people's full name (first and last)
    • print clearly or capture information in a way so it is readable
    • include contextual information such as the name of the activity and the time of the activity
    • make sure that everybody present is included on the list, including participants, volunteers, staff, and
    • include not only people's names and contact information but also what role they play (e.g. are they a participant/volunteer/staff)
• For individuals, keep a log of interactions to self-monitor and to facilitate contact tracing should a case of COVID-19 be detected.
• Print and post safety information related to the above in your vehicle where it can be seen by passengers (i.e. in a clear plastic sleeve).