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The vast majority of employees at Fox Corporation, the umbrella company of the conservative Fox News channel, are vaccinated against the coronavirus and those who are not will have to take daily tests, according to a note sent by bosses – despite some of its more big screen stars questioning the vaccine.
Daily testing is stricter than the Biden administration’s firm mandate that companies with more than 100 employees must require vaccination or weekly testing.
The news came as Joe Biden was scheduled to meet with business leaders, including Disney and Microsoft, on Wednesday to urge that vaccine warrants be issued to employees of U.S. companies.
Such mandates, which have earned the president both praise and criticism since he announced them last week, are expected to cover 80 million workers in large companies as well as 17 million healthcare professionals across the country. country.
In the note, which was sent to Fox Corporation employees Tuesday, Kevin Lord, the company’s executive vice president, announced that more than 90% of the company’s full-time employees had been vaccinated, CNN’s on board reported Tuesday night.
The information was uploaded to a secure system where employees could share their vaccination status, according to the memo.
“Employees who are not vaccinated or have not provided their immunization status and wish to access one of our facilities will not incur the cost of testing,” a Fox Corporation representative told The Guardian on Wednesday.
The memo did not specify when daily testing would begin for unvaccinated employees or those who refused to disclose their status, and a company representative did not respond to a follow-up question about it.
It remains to be seen how this will affect the environment within the organization that houses prominent vaccine skeptics such as Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. The company did not respond to a specific question regarding this inconsistency in its messaging.
CNN further reported that the White House praised Fox and challenged it to reflect its business practices to its viewers.
“Today’s Fox News follows a trend we’re seeing across the country: Vaccination and testing requirements are working,” a White House spokesperson told CNN on Tuesday evening, adding : “We are pleased that they have come together to protect their workforce and strengthen the economy, and we encourage them to communicate to their audiences that these types of practices will protect their employees, their communities and the economy. .
The Fox Corporation employee update coincided with the release on Tuesday of a Kaiser Family Foundation report that estimated the cost of preventable hospitalizations for unvaccinated adults rose from $ 0.6 billion in June to $ 3.7 billion in August, with a total of $ 5 billion spent in those countries. three months alone.
Meanwhile, the number of unvaccinated adults who have been hospitalized primarily for Covid-19 treatment has risen from 39,000 to 342,000, according to the report.
As of Tuesday, the United States had recorded 663,913 deaths since the start of the pandemic, with one in 500 Americans dying from the virus, according to CNN.
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