President Biden To Announce New Federal COVID Vaccine Mandate For Personal Corporations – CBS San Francisco

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden announced comprehensive new federal vaccine requirements Thursday, affecting up to 100 million Americans, to increase COVID-19 vaccinations and curb the rising Delta variant, which kills thousands every week and endangers the country’s economic recovery.

The far-reaching rules dictate that all employers with more than 100 workers require a vaccination or test for the virus weekly, which affects around 80 million Americans. And the roughly 17 million health care workers who receive federal Medicare or Medicaid must also be fully vaccinated.

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Biden also signs an executive order mandating vaccination for executive staff and contractors doing business with the federal government – with no testing facility. That covers several million other employees.

Biden was due to announce the new requirements in a White House address Thursday afternoon as part of a new “plan of action” to combat the recent surge in coronavirus cases and the stagnant pace of COVID-19 gunfire that has raised public doubts have been dealing with the pandemic.

Just two months ago, Biden prematurely declared the nation’s “independence” from the virus. Although more than 208 million Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccines, the US is seeing about 300% more new COVID-19 infections every day, about two and a half times more hospitalizations, and almost twice as many deaths compared to the same point last year.

Biden’s plans were unveiled Thursday afternoon by White House press secretary Jen Psaki and other senior administrative officials ahead of the speech.

After months of using promotions to boost vaccination rates, Biden takes a much firmer hand as his staff blames people who have not yet received vaccinations for the surge in cases that kill more than 1,000 people a day and a fragile economy will rebound.

Psaki said Biden’s “overall goal is to reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans,” noting that about 80 million adults remain unvaccinated.

An AP-NORC poll conducted in August found that 54% of Americans approved of Biden’s responsibility for the public health crisis, up from 66% the previous month, due to a decline in support from Republicans and political independents.

In addition to vaccination requirements, Biden is moving on to doubling federal penalties for passengers who refuse to wear masks on flights or comply with face-covering requirements on federal property, as per the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Biden should also announce that the federal government will work to increase the supply of virus tests and that the White House has received concessions from retailers like Walmart, Amazon and Kroger to start selling home test kits at cost starting this week.

The administration will also send additional federal funding to help the schools operate safely, including additional funding for testing. And Biden will require major entertainment venues and arenas to require vaccinations or proof of a negative entrance test.

The requirement for large corporations to mandate vaccinations or weekly tests for employees will be enacted by an upcoming rule by the labor protection agency that will impose fines of $ 14,000 per violation, an administrative official said. The White House didn’t immediately say when it would go into effect, but said workers would have ample time to get vaccinated.

The rule would also require large companies to provide paid immunization waivers.

In the meantime, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will extend a mandatory vaccination requirement – for nursing home staff – from earlier this summer to other healthcare facilities such as hospitals, home health authorities, and dialysis centers.

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Separately, the Department of Health and Human Services will require vaccinations in head-start programs, as well as in schools at the Department of Defense and India’s Department of Education, affecting approximately 300,000 employees.

Biden’s order for executive employees and contractors includes exemptions for workers seeking a religious or medical exemption from vaccination, according to Psaki. Federal employees and contractors have 75 days to get fully vaccinated. Workers who fail to comply will be referred to their agencies’ human resources departments for advice and discipline, including possible dismissal.

“We want to be a role model for other organizations and companies across the country,” said Psaki of the federal workforce. The AP-NORC poll found that 55% of Americans are in favor of full vaccination for government employees, compared with 21% against.

Biden has promoted COVID-19 vaccine requirements in settings such as schools, workplaces, and campus, and the White House hopes the strengthened federal mandate will inspire more companies to follow suit. The Los Angeles Department of Education was due to vote on Thursday that all students 12 and older in the second largest school district in the country must be fully vaccinated.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Indian Health Service, and the National Institutes of Health previously announced vaccination requirements for the majority of their employees, and the Pentagon decided last month that all service members must be vaccinated . Taken together, the White House estimates that these requirements cover 2.5 million Americans. Thursday’s order is expected to impact nearly 2 million more federal employees and potentially millions of contractors.

More than 177 million are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, but confirmed cases of the virus have risen to an average of about 140,000 per day in the past few weeks, with an average of about 1,000 Americans dying from the virus every day, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .

Most of the spread – and the vast majority of serious illnesses and deaths – is from those who are not yet fully vaccinated against the virus. Breakthrough infections occur in vaccinated people, but are usually far less dangerous.

“We cannot accept that this is the new normal,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner who is regular on the pandemic. If the pandemic continues unabated, it will mean 500,000 deaths a year. “Surely nobody wants that.”

Who has the White House urged to step up on vaccine requirements, including the use of so-called vaccine “passports” for travel and work mandates that leave little room for maneuver.

“I want to see the full power of the federal government here and no longer do things by halves,” she said. “I want to see a hard reset from the Biden administration, no more nibbling on the edges.”

Federal officials are making plans to begin giving booster shots of the mRNA vaccines to strengthen protection against the more easily transmissible Delta variant of the virus. Last month, Biden announced plans to make them available from September 20, but by then only the Pfizer vaccine will likely have received regulatory approval for a third dose. Federal regulators are requesting additional data from Moderna, which is likely to delay approval of the boosters until October.

Officials aim to give the booster dose about eight months after the second dose of the two-dose vaccine.

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