Millions Of Federal Employees Will Be Required To Get COVID Vaccine Under Biden's New Executive Order
Time to get vaxxed!
Naresh777 / Shutterstock.com With COVID-19 cases continuing to soar and health officials becoming increasingly frantic, the White House may need to retarget their approach to the virus.
As a response, President Joe Biden will be delivering a speech in an attempt to lay out a new strategy with the goal of trying to eliminate COVID.
President Biden is expected to announced vaccine mandates for all federal employees.
In a landmark decision expected to be made on Thursday, Biden will declare COVID-19 vaccines to be mandatory for all federal employees.
It’s said that, President Biden will sign an executive order that will also mandate vaccines for employees of contractors who do business with the federal government.
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The Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Indian Health Service and National Institutes of Health will also complete their previously announced vaccination requirements, which the White House estimates covers 2.5 million workers.
Biden is concentrating his efforts on tackling COVID-19.
The president has been facing a lot of pressure from constituents who expect Biden to accomplish one thing — ending the COVID crisis.
Children now represent one in four new cases, hospitals are running out of ICU beds, and there’s a nationwide nurse shortage.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki admitted on Thursday that Americans are "frustrated" with the way the pandemic is going, and that the President will explain what comes next for our country.
"That includes getting more people who are unvaccinated vaccinated,” she said. “That means reducing hospitalizations. That means putting in place more testing requirements and putting in place more protections in the form of boosters to make sure people have an even greater level of protection.”
Biden's approval rating is dropping.
The president’s approval rating on Covid has slipped since June.
In a poll carried out at the end of August, 52% of respondents said that they had approved of how Biden is handling the pandemic — a 10% fall from June.
While that still shows a majority of people approve of Biden's approach, his overall approval rating has slipped following the messy politics that resulted from the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
He is also expected to announce a major expansion to Covid testing and clear up any confusion with the upcoming booster shots — without announcing when Americans will be able to get them.
Biden's COVID-19 strategy may not be enough to tackle the virus.
The six-pronged plan Biden is set to unveil includes “vaccinating the unvaccinated; further protecting the vaccinated through booster shots; keeping schools open; increasing testing and requiring masks; protecting the economic recovery; and improving care for those with COVID-19,” according to White House officials.
With kids returning to school, parents and teachers are suffering from the constant battles across the country over mask and vaccine mandates.
However, some are managing their expectations in the face of rising COVID cases.
"COVID is never going to disappear. Anyone who says we're going to eradicate it or that it's vanquished, honestly, they're lying," said Megan Ranney, associate dean of Brown University's School of Public Health.
"COVID is going to be around forever. We have to learn how to deal with it, and we have to make it something that is no longer as dangerous as it has been."
While the government has been hesitant in requiring a vaccine passport, they are looking for ways to boost vaccination numbers.
The Biden administration believes that private sectors could do much more to help boost the amount of people getting vaccinated — implementing the vaccine passport, requiring that employees get vaccinated, or even announcing incentives for people to get the vaccine.
With the Delta variant rampaging through the country and the booster shot still being reviewed by the White House before being open to the public, Biden plans to address the medical emergency as best he can.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice and politics.