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The Biden administration COVID-19 action plan, also called the Path out of the Pandemic, is a substantial increase in the use of vaccination mandates as part of the U.S. federal government response to the COVID-19 pandemic announced by President Joe Biden on September 9, 2021, to be carried out by officials in the Biden administration. The plan included various announced prospective efforts, as well as the issuance of several executive orders.
The plan had three major components aimed at increasing vaccination levels among American workers, these being a requirement that federal contractors have fully vaccinated personnel, that recipients of Medicare and Medicaid dollars (CMS entities) have fully vaccinated personnel, and a Temporary Emergency Standard by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requiring that all businesses with more than 100 employees have their employees either vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 on a weekly basis. The rule for federal contractors was issued on September 24, 2021, while the OSHA and CMS rules were issued on November 4, 2021.
The plan also called for measures to increase the availability of booster shots for people previously vaccinated for COVID-19, and to deploy additional resources to provide care for those infected with the disease. On January 19, 2022, the Biden administration is reported to begin freely providing 400 million N95 masks in the United States. [1]
Many aspects of the plan, particularly those relating to vaccination mandates, drew opposition, and in some cases, litigation. Ultimately, the United States Supreme Court issued a pair of rulings, one suspending the OSHA mandate, and the other permitting the CMS mandate to go forward. Other courts stayed the mandates for federal contractors and federal employees, but a substantial majority of persons in those positions were vaccinated while those mandates were in effect.
On September 9, 2021, Biden announced a six-point plan of new measures to help control the pandemic, with the points being: [2]
- Vaccinating the Unvaccinated
- Further Protecting the Vaccinated
- Keeping Schools Safely Open
- Increasing Testing & Requiring Masking
- Protecting Our Economic Recovery
- Improving Care for those with COVID-19
The plan included new executive orders and regulatory actions to effectively mandate vaccination for COVID-19 among a large swath of the American workforce. Executive orders were announced directing all federal agencies to mandate the vaccination of their employees (with exceptions as required by law, and no option for regular testing in lieu of vaccination) [3] per guidance to be developed by the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force, and all future government contracts to include a clause requiring compliance with guidance to be developed by the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force (likely to include a similar mandate). [3] The administration later set a November 22, 2021 deadline for most federal employees to be fully vaccinated and a January 4, 2022 deadline for federal contractors to be vaccinated. [4]
The employees of all federally-funded Medicaid and Medicare-certified health care facilities, and Head Start program facilities, must be vaccinated. [5] [6] [3] Companies with more than 100 employees may choose to require vaccination and must give their workers four hours' paid time off for their vaccination appointments; their unvaccinated employees (if any) must wear masks and be tested weekly for COVID-19, according to an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Emergency Temporary Standard. [7] [8] These two policies together—federally-funded healthcare facilities and large companies—will apply to 100 million workers and are scheduled to take effect on January 4, 2022. [4] Biden explained that corporate vaccine mandates had already been implemented by "some of the biggest companies" in the country, including Disney, Fox News, Tyson Foods, and United Airlines, and that "We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us." [9]
In June 2021, OSHA issued an Emergency Temporary Standard for the healthcare industry, requiring that employers in that industry take various steps to protect employees from the spread of COVID-19. In particular, these included social distancing and hygiene measures, and a requirement that employers ask employees from time to time whether they are experiencing any symptoms of the disease, but they did not include either a vaccination requirement or a testing requirement. ETS is effective until it is replaced by a permanent standard. [10]
Titled "Executive Order on Ensuring Adequate COVID Safety Protocols for Federal Contractors", this Executive Order also issued on September 9 instructed government agencies to require employees of federal contractors be vaccinated.
Pursuant to this executive order, the administration released a document titled COVID-19 Workplace Safety: Guidance for Federal Contractors and Subcontractors.
This standard required that all federal contracts issued after November 15, 2021, or renewed or optioned after October 15, 2021, must contain a clause requiring that contracting parties have a vaccination mandate in place covering employees working on the contract, as well as employees who supervise the contract employees, and employees who work in close physical proximity to the contract employees.
On November 30, 2021, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky enjoined enforcement of this requirement in the states of Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, finding that it was beyond the power of federal procurement laws. Shortly thereafter, the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana extended this injunction to the rest of the United States. [11]
Titled "Requiring Coronavirus Disease 2019 Vaccination for Federal Employees", this order required that government agencies "shall implement, to the extent consistent with applicable law, a program to require COVID–19 vaccination for all of its Federal employees, with exceptions only as required by law". [12]
This order was also challenged in various courts. As of August 2022 [update] , it remained stayed nationwide by the Fifth Circuit. [13] Nevertheless, a substantial majority of federal employees were vaccinated pursuant to the order without objection and prior to the court action.
On January 1, 2022, judge Terry A. Doughty of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana blocked that vaccination mandate for Head Start teachers. [14]
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) promulgated an interim rule requiring that companies receiving Medicare and Medicaid payments must have employees fully vaccinated by January 4, 2022, with exceptions for employees with medical and religious exemptions. Unlike the simultaneously released OSHA standard, there is no option for employees without an exemption to be tested rather than being vaccinated.
This rule was stayed in ten states by a court order issued on November 29, 2021, and in the rest of the country by a separate court order issued the following day. [15]
In January 2022, the CMS mandate was upheld by a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court, but CMS later issued guidance indicating that they would give hospitals substantial flexibility in allowing exemptions to the mandate. [16]
The OSHA standard requires covered companies to either institute a vaccination mandate, or to institute a policy requiring employees to choose between either vaccination or a combination of weekly testing and mask-wearking at the workplace.
The standard applies to all businesses with over 100 employees, including full-time and part-time employees, but excluding contractors. Employees who work entirely remotely or entirely outdoors, or otherwise do not come into contact with other people through the course of their employment, are exempt from the vaccination and/or testing requirement. However, a company with over 100 employees is still generally under the standard even if all or nearly all employees work remotely.
Employers are required to provide up to four hours of paid leave for each vaccination dose received, and sufficient sick leave to allow employees to recover from any effects of vaccination.
Although the ETS initially required employees to be vaccinated by December 6, it does not implement any consequences for nonvaccination (these being testing and mask-wearing requirements) until January 4. Non-vaccinating employees must take a COVID-19 test either monitored by company personnel or through a third-party service, to insure that employees do not misrepresent the results of COVID-19 tests. Employees who choose not to be vaccinated must pay the cost of their own testing. Employers must maintain records of employee vaccination status. Furthermore, employees are required to report work-related COVID-19 fatalities within 8 hours of the employer learning of them, and work-related COVID-19 hospitalizations within 24 hours of the employer learning of them. Penalties for noncompliance can be $13,653 per instance, and up to $136,532 per instance of willful noncompliance.
Individual states may be exempted from the OSHA ETS if they adopt their own health and safety regulations of equal or greater effect.
On November 5, 2021, the OSHA ETS was temporarily stayed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, pending arguments by parties opposing the ETS, and by the government in support of the ETS; this stay was then extended on November 12, 2021. OSHA thereafter announced its suspension of enforcement of the ETS during these legal proceedings. [17] The stay was lifted by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on December 17, 2021. [18]
On January 13, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States disagreed with Sixth Circuit, ordering that enforcement of the ETS was to be "stayed pending disposition of the applicants' petitions for review in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit". The majority opinion was held by Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett. A dissenting opinion was issued by Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. [19] [20]
Justices Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito concluded in their concurring opinion that "under the law as it stands today, that power rests with the States and Congress, not OSHA". However, the controlling per curiam opinion stated:
That is not to say OSHA lacks authority to regulate occupation-specific risks related to COVID–19. Where the virus poses a special danger because of the particular features of an employee's job or workplace, targeted regulations are plainly permissible. We do not doubt, for example, that OSHA could regulate researchers who work with the COVID–19 virus. So too could OSHA regulate risks associated with working in particularly crowded or cramped environments.
A dissenting opinion by Justices Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor would have found the OSHA mandate to be within the statutory power afforded to the agency. Following the decision of the court, OSHA withdrew the ETS.
Many Republicans asserted Biden's order was an unconstitutional overreach of federal authority, and some Republican governors said they would sue to block it. [21] Despite the network being specifically cited by Biden during his speech as a major employer with vaccine requirements, Fox News pundits criticized the move; Sean Hannity described Biden as having "cancelled all medical freedom". [22] [23] The next day, Biden responded to the accusations, stating "Have at it. Look, I am so disappointed that, particularly some of the Republican governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids, so cavalier with the health of their communities. We're playing for real here, this isn't a game, and I don't know of any scientist out there in this field that doesn't think it makes considerable sense to do the six things I've suggested." [24]
In addition to mandates, the plan promised steps to quickly role out the availability of booster shots to those eligible to receive them, with boosters to be available for free as early as the week of September 20, subject to FDA approval and review by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. [25] This aspect of the plan raised concerns with some federal officials, who argued that more time was needed to study the efficacy of boosters before widely recommending them. [26]
The plan provided for an increase in funds available from the COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, with the Small Business Administration (SBA) raising the limit for small businesses borrowing from this program from $500,000 to $2 million, easing access to loans for small businesses with multiple locations, and implementing "a 30-day exclusive window of access where only small businesses seeking loans of $500,000 or less will receive awards after the new improved loan product launches".
The plan also extolled a measure enacted the month before under which the SBA would send pre-completed applications for forgiveness of SBA loans of up to $150,000 to borrowers. The borrowers could then review, sign, and return the form to SBA, to speed up the forgiveness loan forgiveness process.
In January 2022, the government launched COVIDtests.gov, a website for American residents to request free rapid tests from the government through the mail. [27]
The plan promised to double the number of United States Department of Defense teams of clinicians "deployed to support hospitals battling a surge in COVID-19 cases", with deployment to be coordinated through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
A vaccination policy is a health policy adopted in order to prevent the spread of infectious disease. These policies are generally put into place by state or local governments, but may also be set by private facilities, such as workplaces or schools. Many policies have been developed and implemented since vaccines were first made widely available.
Terry Alvin Doughty is the Chief United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. Nominated by President Donald Trump, Doughty served as a judge on the Fifth Judicial District Court in Louisiana from 2009 to 2018.
Vaccination policy of the United States is the subset of U.S. federal health policy that deals with immunization against infectious disease. It is decided at various levels of the government, including the individual states. This policy has been developed over the approximately two centuries since the invention of vaccination with the purpose of eradicating disease from the U.S. population, or creating a herd immunity. Policies intended to encourage vaccination impact numerous areas of law, including regulation of vaccine safety, funding of vaccination programs, vaccine mandates, adverse event reporting requirements, and compensation for injuries asserted to be associated with vaccination.
On December 31, 2019, China announced the discovery of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. The first American case was reported on January 20, and President Donald Trump declared the U.S. outbreak a public health emergency on January 31. Restrictions were placed on flights arriving from China, but the initial U.S. response to the pandemic was otherwise slow, in terms of preparing the healthcare system, stopping other travel, and testing. The first known American deaths occurred in February. On March 6, 2020, Trump allocated $8.3 billion to fight the outbreak and declared a national emergency on March 13. The government also purchased large quantities of medical equipment, invoking the Defense Production Act of 1950 to assist. By mid-April, disaster declarations were made by all states and territories as they all had increasing cases. A second wave of infections began in June, following relaxed restrictions in several states, leading to daily cases surpassing 60,000. By mid-October, a third surge of cases began; there were over 200,000 new daily cases during parts of December 2020 and January 2021.
Hazard controls for COVID-19 in workplaces are the application of occupational safety and health methodologies for hazard controls to the prevention of COVID-19. Vaccination is the most effective way to protect against severe illness or death from COVID-19. Multiple layers of controls are recommended, including measures such as remote work and flextime, increased ventilation, personal protective equipment (PPE) and face coverings, social distancing, and enhanced cleaning programs.
The wearing of non-medical face masks in public to lessen the transmission of COVID-19 in the United States was first recommended by the CDC on April 3, 2020, as supplemental to hygiene and appropriate social distancing. Throughout the pandemic, various states, counties, and municipalities have issued health orders requiring the wearing of non-medical face coverings — such as cloth masks — in spaces and businesses accessible to the public, especially when physical distancing is not possible.
COVID-19 vaccination in Canada is an ongoing, intergovernmental effort coordinated between the bodies responsible in the Government of Canada to acquire and distribute vaccines to individual provincial and territorial governments who in turn administer authorized COVID-19 vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. Provinces have worked with local municipal governments, hospital systems, family doctors and independently owned pharmacies to aid in part, or in full with vaccination rollout. The vaccination effort in full is the largest such immunization effort in the nation's history. The vaccination effort began December 14, 2020, and is currently ongoing.
The COVID-19 vaccination campaign in the United States is an ongoing mass immunization campaign for the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first granted emergency use authorization to the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine on December 10, 2020, and mass vaccinations began four days later. The Moderna vaccine was granted emergency use authorization on December 17, 2020, and the Janssen vaccine was granted emergency use authorization on February 27, 2021. By April 19, 2021, all U.S. states had opened vaccine eligibility to residents aged 16 and over. On May 10, 2021, the FDA approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for adolescents aged 12 to 15. On August 23, 2021, the FDA granted full approval to the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccine for individuals aged 16 and over.
COVID-19 vaccination in New Zealand began on 20 February 2021, and will continue throughout the pandemic with the goal of vaccinating all willing New Zealanders aged 5 or older. Those aged 5 to 11 require a parent, caregiver or legal guardian accompany them to their appointment and provide consent for them to be vaccinated. As of 1 September, anyone in New Zealand, regardless of their immigration status, is eligible to be vaccinated.
This article documents the chronology of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in September 2021, which originated in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Some developments may become known or fully understood only in retrospect. Reporting on this pandemic began in December 2019.
Klaassen v. Indiana University, was a 2021 United States federal court case in which students attending Indiana University challenged the institution's COVID-19 vaccine mandate set to go into effect in September 2021. A motion for preliminary injunction was denied by Judge Damon R. Leichty on July 18, 2021. On August 2, 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit also denied a motion to enjoin the mandate while Leichty's ruling was appealed. On August 12, 2021, Justice Amy Coney Barrett denied relief to the petitioners, allowing the vaccination mandate to go into effect. The case is named for lead plaintiff Ryan Klassen of Noble County, Indiana.
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the United States is the sociocultural phenomenon of individuals refusing or displaying hesitance towards receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the United States can be considered as part of the broader history of vaccine hesitancy.
In many countries a variety of unfounded conspiracy theories and other misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines have spread based on misunderstood or misrepresented science, religion, and law. These have included exaggerated claims about side effects, misrepresentations about how the immune system works and when and how COVID-19 vaccines are made, a story about COVID-19 being spread by 5G, and other false or distorted information. This misinformation, some created by anti-vaccination activists, has proliferated and may have made many people averse to vaccination. This has led to governments and private organizations around the world introducing measures to incentivize or coerce vaccination, such as lotteries, mandates, and free entry to events, which has in turn led to further misinformation about the legality and effect of these measures themselves. {{TOC limit|4}
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, COVID-19 vaccine mandates have been enacted by numerous states and municipalities in the United States, and also by private entities. In September 2021, President Joe Biden announced that the federal government would take steps to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for certain entities under the authority of the federal government or federal agencies. Most federal mandates thus imposed were either overturned through litigation, or withdrawn by the administration, although a mandate on health care workers in institutions receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds was upheld. All federal mandates were lifted when the national emergency was declared to have ended in May 2023. A small number of states have gone in the opposite direction, through executive orders or legislation designed to limit vaccination mandates.
A vaccine passport or proof of vaccination is an immunity passport employed as a credential in countries and jurisdictions as part of efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic via vaccination. A vaccine passport is typically issued by a government or health authority, and usually consists of a digital or printed record. Some credentials may include a scannable QR code, which can also be provisioned via mobile app. It may or may not use a COVID-19 vaccine card as a basis of authentication.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.
The COVID-19 Response (Vaccinations) Legislation Act 2021 is an Act of Parliament to provide a legal framework for the New Zealand Government's COVID-19 Protection Framework and vaccination mandates. The bill was introduced under urgency and passed in law on 23 November 2021. While the bill was supported by the Labour Government and their Green coalition partners, it was opposed by the opposition National, ACT, and Māori parties, which criticised the rushed and divisive nature of the legislation and claimed that vulnerable communities would be adversely affected.
National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 595 U.S. ___ (2022), is a Supreme Court of the United States case before the Court on an application for a stay of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's COVID-19 vaccination or test mandate. On January 13, 2022, the Supreme Court ordered a stay of the mandate.
COVID-19 vaccination mandates in Canada are the responsibility of provinces, territories, and municipalities, and in the case of federal public services and federally-regulated transportation industries, the federal government. COVID-19 vaccines are free in Canada through the public health care system. The federal government is responsible for procurement and distribution of the vaccines to provincial and territorial authorities; provincial and territorial governments are responsible for administering vaccinations to people in their respective jurisdictions. Mass vaccination efforts began across Canada on December 14, 2020. As the second vaccinations became more widely available in June 2021, Manitoba became the first province in Canada to offer a voluntary vaccine passport.
Absence management, also known as leave management, is a combination of employer policies, procedures, or programs designed to handle employee leaves of absence and minimize the impact of those absences on the employer. Absence management programs aim to maximize productivity by supporting an employee from initial absence through return-to-work and stay-at-work plans.