Biden goes further than Newsom in vaccine mandate for public employees: No exception for tests
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Thursday that would require all federal executive-branch employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
This would affect more than 150,000 workers across multiple federal agencies in California, according to the most recently publicized federal data.
His order is more stringent than the one Gov. Gavin Newsom handed down for California state workers in July. Newsom’s order allows most public employees an option to submit to regular coronavirus testing in lieu of getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
Biden’s order comes along with a separate mandate requiring large private sector employers to test unvaccinated workers for COVID-19 in an effort to combat the new delta variant and its effects on both vaccinated and unvaccinated people.
In remarks on Thursday regarding these policies, Biden said that, “we’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” regarding people who were not vaccinated, and that their refusal to get the shot “has cost all of us.”
The American Federation of Government Employees — which represents 700,000 federal and D.C. government employees, and has more than 25,000 due-paying members in California — said that it strongly urges its members to get vaccinated and that changing protocols for workers should be negotiated before they are implemented.
“Neither of these positions has changed,” AFGE’s national president, Everett Kelley, said in a statement on Thursday. “We expect to bargain over this change prior to implementation, and we urge everyone who is able to get vaccinated as soon as they can do so.”
Agencies mentioned in an 11-page White House memo about these mandates on Thursday that already had similar requirements were the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Indian Health Service and the National Institute of Health.
Other executive-branch agencies with large populations of federal employees in California include those working for national parks, the Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Agriculture.
The rule extends to individuals and businesses that do contract work for the government.
Alongside the order, the White House announced that businesses with more than 100 employees must require workers to either get vaccinated or be tested for the virus weekly, and offer paid time off for their employees to get inoculated. The White House estimated that this would affect about 80 million workers in the private sector.
These orders and mandates, dubbed the “Path out of the Pandemic” by the White House, come as hospitalizations around the country increase for those who are not vaccinated and breakthrough cases impact those who have gotten the shot.
Almost 70% of Californians have been fully vaccinated, according to data tracked by the state, with an additional 10% of individuals partially vaccinated.
More than half of the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data collected by Mayo Clinic. Three-fourths of Americans have had at least one shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
About 153,000 people in the United States have tested positive for the coronavirus each day on average over the past week, according to the CDC, an increase of 5% week over week. More than 1,000 people have died from COVID-19 on average per day over the last week, a 4% increase compared to the average last week, according to the CDC.
“What makes it incredibly more frustrating is we have the tools to combat COVID-19 and a distinct minority of Americans, supported by a distinct minority of elected officials, are preventing us from turning the corner,” Biden said Thursday.
Biden’s mandates also call for all health care workers in facilities that receive Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements to get inoculated. The announcement read that it would apply to about 50,000 providers across hospitals, dialysis facilities, ambulatory surgical settings and home health agencies in addition to nursing care facilities, which had already had some requirements.
Newsom had already ordered all of the state’s approximately 2.2 million health care workers to get vaccinated.
This story was originally published September 9, 2021 at 4:10 PM with the headline "Biden goes further than Newsom in vaccine mandate for public employees: No exception for tests."
