“I know a couple big companies that are ready to hit send on the email to all employees, and they’re waiting for this thing to come out,” said Joseph Allen, an associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who advises companies on Covid-19 strategies. “If they’re going to spend the next two months getting the wording absolutely 100 percent on the rule-making, it defeats the purpose.”
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- Vaccine rules. On Aug. 23, the F.D.A. granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for people 16 and up, paving the way for mandates in both the public and private sectors. Such mandates are legally allowed and have been upheld in court challenges.
- College and universities. More than 400 colleges and universities are requiring students to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Almost all are in states that voted for President Biden.
- Schools. California became the first state to issue a vaccine mandate for all educators and to announce plans to add the Covid-19 vaccine as a requirement to attend school, which could start as early as next fall. Los Angeles already has a vaccine mandate for public school students 12 and older that begins Nov. 21. New York City’s mandate for teachers and staff, which went into effect Oct. 4 after delays due to legal challenges, appears to have prompted thousands of last-minute shots.
- Hospitals and medical centers. Many hospitals and major health systems are requiring employees to get vaccinated. Mandates for health care workers in California and New York State appear to have compelled thousands of holdouts to receive shots.
- Indoor activities. New York City requires workers and customers to show proof of at least one dose of the Covid-19 for indoor dining, gyms, entertainment and performances. Starting Nov. 4, Los Angeles will require most people to provide proof of full vaccination to enter a range of indoor businesses, including restaurants, gyms, museums, movie theaters and salons, in one of the nation’s strictest vaccine rules.
- At the federal level. On Sept. 9, President Biden announced a vaccine mandate for the vast majority of federal workers. This mandate will apply to employees of the executive branch, including the White House and all federal agencies and members of the armed services.
- In the private sector. Mr. Biden has mandated that all companies with more than 100 workers require vaccination or weekly testing, helping propel new corporate vaccination policies. Some companies, like United Airlines and Tyson Foods, had mandates in place before Mr. Biden’s announcement.
An OSHA rule would take part of the pressure off employers by giving them clear directives, experts say, but the agency must first set standards that pass legal muster.
Several Republican governors have said that they will challenge a formalized vaccine mandate. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said in September that his state was “already working to halt this power grab.” Gov. Mike Parson of Missouri has called the mandate “potentially dangerous” for working families. Mark Brnovich, the Republican attorney general of Arizona, filed a lawsuit against the OSHA rule and has threatened that attorneys general in 23 other states may follow suit.
“I know the vaccination requirements are tough medicine,” Mr. Biden said on Thursday, addressing some of the criticism. “Unpopular with some. Politics for others. But they’re lifesaving. They’re game-changing for our country.”
Experts said that legal challenges to the rule were all but assured, but precedent is most likely on Mr. Biden’s side. In the past 20 years, “every standard that has been challenged in court has been upheld by federal judges,” David Michaels, a professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health who was a head of OSHA during the Obama administration, said in an interview.
OSHA also has the authority to quickly issue a rule, known as an emergency temporary standard, if it can show that workers are exposed to grave danger and that the rule is necessary to address it. The rule must also be feasible for employers to enforce.
The rule-making process, overseen by about a dozen officials at the agency and a team of lawyers, includes a number of rigorous, time-consuming steps to gird against legal challenges. Officials were given only about a week’s notice before Mr. Biden’s announcement, according to an official familiar with the directive.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/us/politics/biden-vaccine-mandate-osha.html
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