President Biden announces Path out of the Pandemic action plan requiring vaccination
President Biden announced Thursday, September 9, that a six-pronged, comprehensive national strategy that employs the same science-based approach that was used to successfully combat previous variants of COVID-19 earlier this year is being implemented. The plan includes a mandate requiring all employers with 100+ employees to ensure their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly.
This plan will ensure that we are using every available tool to combat COVID-19 and save even more lives in the months ahead, while also keeping schools open and safe, and protecting our economy from lockdowns and damage.
Since January, the Administration has taken actions to make vaccination conveniently available to all. COVID vaccines have been available to every individual age 16 and older since April 19th and to those age 12 and older since May. The Administration took steps to make vaccines available at over 80,000 locations nationwide, worked with pharmacies to offer walk-in appointments, and put out a call to action to businesses and organizations across the nation.
The President announced vaccination requirements for the federal government in July and called on the private sector to do more to encourage vaccination as well. Since that time, employers, schools, nursing homes, restaurants, hospitals and cities in all 50 states have announced new vaccination requirements.
All told, these efforts—and countless other Administration initiatives and policies—have resulted in over 175 million fully vaccinated Americans. But there are still nearly 80 million Americans eligible to be vaccinated who have not yet gotten their first shot.
The President’s plan will reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans by using regulatory powers and other actions to substantially increase the number of Americans covered by vaccination requirements—these requirements will become dominant in the workplace. In addition, the plan will provide paid time off for vaccination for most workers in the country.
The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is developing a rule that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work. OSHA will issue an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) to implement this requirement. This requirement will impact over 80 million workers in private sector businesses with 100+ employees.
Building on the President’s announcement in July to strengthen safety requirements for unvaccinated federal workers, the President has signed an Executive Order to take those actions a step further and require all federal executive branch workers to be vaccinated. The President also signed an Executive Order directing that this standard be extended to employees of contractors that do business with the federal government. As part of this effort, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Indian Health Service and the National Institute of Health will complete implementation of their previously announced vaccination requirements that cover 2.5 million people.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is taking action to require COVID-19 vaccinations for workers in most healthcare settings that receive Medicare or Medicaid reimbursement, including but not limited to hospitals, dialysis facilities, ambulatory surgical settings and home health agencies.
This action builds on the vaccination requirement for nursing facilities recently announced by CMS, and will apply to nursing home staff as well as staff in hospitals and other CMS-regulated settings, including clinical staff, individuals providing services under arrangements, volunteers and staff who are not involved in direct patient, resident or client care. These requirements will apply to approximately 50,000 providers and cover a majority of healthcare workers across the country. Some facilities and states have begun to adopt hospital staff or health care sector vaccination mandates. This action will create a consistent standard across the country, while giving patients assurance of the vaccination status of those delivering care.
The President’s plan calls on entertainment venues like sports arenas, large concert halls and other venues where large groups of people gather to require that their patrons be vaccinated or show a negative test for entry.
To continue efforts to ensure that no worker loses a dollar of pay because they get vaccinated, OSHA is developing a rule that will require employers with more than 100 employees to provide paid time off for the time it takes for workers to get vaccinated or to recover if they are under the weather post-vaccination. This requirement will be implemented through the ETS.
There are over 175 million fully vaccinated Americans who are largely protected from severe illness from COVID-19. While so-called “breakthrough infections” among this group do happen, they remain the exception: In fact, recent data indicates there is only 1 confirmed positive case per 5,000 fully vaccinated Americans per week.
COVID-19 vaccination protection can be made even stronger. The plan released by our nation’s doctors allows for states, pharmacies, doctors’ offices, health insurers and others to prepare for the administration of boosters. In the beginning weeks of the initial vaccination program in December 2020, the country lost precious time because we were unprepared to administer shots. By planning now, we will be able to quickly get booster shots into the arms of eligible Americans once approved.
A booster promises to give Americans their highest level of protection yet. Three-shot vaccines are common (Hepatitis B, Tetanus) and offer some of the most durable and robust protection.
Implementation of this plan depends on authorization of boosters by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and recommendations by the CDC’s independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). As soon as authorizations are given, the Administration will be prepared to offer booster shots, starting the week of September 20th.
To improve access to rapid tests for all consumers, top retailers that sell at-home, rapid COVID-19 tests—Walmart, Amazon and Kroger—will offer to sell those tests at-cost for the next three months. This means that Americans will be able to buy these tests at their local retailers or online for up to 35 percent less starting by the end of this week. The Administration has also taken action so that Medicaid must cover at-home tests for free for beneficiaries, and that states should ensure that any tools they use to manage at-home testing do not establish arbitrary barriers for people seeking care.
President Biden has directed the Department of Education to assess all of its available tools to take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure that state and local officials are giving all students the opportunity to safely participate in full-time, in-person learning. To date, the Department has launched investigations in five states that have prohibited mask mandates at schools: Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah. These investigations will examine whether statewide mask mandate prohibitions discriminate against students with disabilities who are at heightened risk for severe illness from COVID-19 by preventing them from safely accessing in-person education.
