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WASHINGTON – President Joe biden On Thursday, they signed two executive orders mandating vaccines for federal workers and contractors, as part of a series of measures to increase pressure on the unvaccinated.
Biden is also expected to ask the Department of Labor to pass a rule requiring all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or to produce a negative Covid test at least once a week, said a senior administration official. The requirement could result in a fine of $ 14,000 per violation and would affect two-thirds of the country’s workforce, the official said.
Biden will also order the vast majority of healthcare facilities to require their staff to be fully immunized as a condition of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, a move that would affect 17 million workers from 50,000 healthcare providers, the official said. In July, 27 percent of healthcare workers were not vaccinated, according to a study by the Covid States Project.
Biden will announce the measures in a White House speech Thursday as part of a larger plan to fight the virus.
The administration, which avoided the warrants in early summer, is now adopting them, as what Biden once called the “summer of freedom” ends with thousands unvaccinated. Americans dying of Covid-19 every week. Much of Biden’s broader agenda and political stance is seen as dependent on his ability to fight the pandemic, with his number of approvals dwindling as new infections increase.
Biden had given federal workers the choice to undergo regular testing instead of getting the vaccine, but that opt-out option will no longer be an option.
“It’s simple: if you want to work for the federal government, you have to be vaccinated. If you want to do business with the government, you have to vaccinate your workforce,” the official said.
To make testing more accessible, the president will announce that Walmart, Amazon and Kroger will start selling rapid at-home tests for no profit over the next three months, leading to a 35% price drop by the end of the season. week. Medicaid will also cover free home testing for beneficiaries, and the federal government will expand a free testing program to 10,000 pharmacies.
To help deal with the increase in cases in schools that have led to hundreds of closures over the past month, an administration official said the president will call on all schools to set up regular testing and plans to make additional funds available to local school districts that have had their cut in state government funding for the implementation of Covid safety measures, such as mask requirements.
The Education Department has launched inquiries into whether mask warrants in five states discriminate against students with disabilities who are at increased risk of severe Covid illness by denying them access to in-person education, said the responsible.
The administration will also require 30,000 Head Start teachers to be vaccinated and ask governors to require vaccinations for teachers and school staff, the official said.
The CDC recommends that testing be offered to students who have not been fully immunized if there is a high spread of the virus, and that teachers and staff who have not been fully immunized should be screened regardless of the level of community transmission.
Biden’s Covid reset comes as the rapidly spreading delta variant threatens to block the country’s economic rebound and derail efforts to bring students back to class. Just weeks after returning to school, tens of thousands of students and staff had to self-isolate following outbreaks in schools, and administration attributed disappointing employment figures August to variant as consumer confidence declines.
Biden’s approval rating for his handling of the coronavirus outbreak has steadily declined over the summer, from 63% at the end of June to 53% this week, according to the FiveThirtyEight vote mean. He also saw a drop in his broader approval rating, which has slipped 6 points since July to just 43%, in a NPR / PBS NewsHour / Marist Poll released last week.
At the start of the summer, Biden promoted his success in reducing Covid cases to the lowest level since the start of the pandemic and predicted that 70% of adults would be vaccinated before Independence Day. White House officials have said they hope Biden’s response to the pandemic will restore Americans’ confidence in the government and make it easier to sell other aspects of his national agenda, such as an ambitious infrastructure spending program. .
“America is heading for a radically different summer from the summer of last year: a summer of freedom, a summer of joy, a summer of meeting and celebrating,” Biden predicted on June 2. “An all-American summer that this country deserves after a long, long, dark winter we have all endured.
Summer was indeed different, but not in the way Biden had anticipated. States such as Florida have set records for the number of patients hospitalized with Covid, as new cases across the country have far exceeded numbers seen last summer due to the spread of the delta variant.
But at the same time, Americans have followed through on Biden’s prediction of a return to celebrations and rallies, which has now raised public health officials’ fears of a new wave of infections after the trips and rallies of the Labor Day weekend.
Across the country, states are seeing hospitals inundated with Covid patients. In Idaho, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, officials said on Tuesday they were allowing health care providers to start rationing care in order to make limited resources available. patients most likely to survive due to a severe shortage of staff, beds and equipment. .
The pace of vaccinations has improved somewhat, which has started to rise again in recent weeks after stabilizing in July. The United States passed the milestone this week of having 75 percent of adults at least virtually immunized. The biggest gains were among young adults and teens, which White House officials attributed to college and employer vaccination mandates as well as heightened fears of the delta variant.
The United States has also started to see a drop in the number of new cases and deaths over the past week. But public health officials have warned it could be a short-lived hiatus, following Labor Day weekend rallies and millions of children returning to school this week.
Health officials also warn of a winter wave that could coincide with particularly severe flu seasons with children returning to school, people gathering more than last winter, and mask requirements missing in most of the country.
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