By Leshi Adebayo
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden announced a new federal vaccine requirements which will affect nearly 100 million Americans, in a bid to increase COVID-19 vaccinations and curtail the surging delta variant.
He also urged nearly 80m unvaccinated Americans to get the COVID-19 vaccine shots saying that the rest of the country’s “patience is wearing thin” with them.
Although Biden cannot merely mandate that all Americans get vaccinated against the virus, the new rules, still could cover as many as 100m people, according to the White House.
In this piece, BlackBox Nigeria highlights the salient points of the announcement.
1. Every federal employees is expected to be vaccinated, with no option of regular testing to opt-out. A large majority of federal employees will get a 75-day ultimatum to get vaccinated.
2. This Federal mandate concerns employees of executive branch, the White House, all federal agencies and every member of the armed services except those who work in Congress or the federal court system.
3. Biden is to sign an executive order which will extend vaccination requirements to employees of all contractors who are in business with the federal government.
4. About 17M health care workers employed by institutions that accept Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement are expected to get vaccinated, same goes for hospitals and nursing homes.
5. All employers with over 100 employees are to see to it that their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly. Failure to do this will attract fines of up to $14,000 per employee.
6. All 300,000 educators in federal Head Start programmes are required to be vaccinated and the President will call on governors to require vaccinations for schoolteachers and staff.
7. There will be availability of free booster shots for most Americans once approved by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
8. There will be a Reduction in costs of Covid-19 testing for Americans. The administration will work with US retailers such as Wal-Mart, Amazon and Kroger to make at-home testing kits available “at cost.”
9. Meanwhile, Transportation Safety Administration will double fines on passengers who have no face masks on. The minimum fine will be increased to $500, with $3,000 being the maximum fine for repeat offenders.
