Gov. Brian Kemp quickly vowed to go to court and other Georgia Republicans responded with angry charges of government overreach after President Joe Biden outlined a plan of expansive new federal vaccine requirements to attack the surge of COVID-19.
More than 80 million employees of private businesses in the U.S. will be required to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing as part of the Biden administration’s latest strategy for combating the still-surging coronavirus pandemic.
The upcoming vaccine rule for companies with at least 100 employees is one plank of an increasingly aggressive effort by the White House to ensure Americans are protected against the virus.
Biden rolled out his six-pronged strategy Thursday afternoon, which included more vaccine requirements for other settings as well. The vast majority of federal employees and contractors will have a new mandate, and the 17 million health care workers at facilities participating in the federal Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs.
“It’s not about freedom or personal choice,” Biden said in a speech from the White House. “It’s about protecting yourself and those around you.”
The White House also will try to make at-home testing more accessible; push to vaccinate the 10% of school teachers and staffers who are not vaccinated; extend the federal mask requirement on planes through Jan. 18 (and doubling fines for non-compliance); and offer more clinicians to support COVID-19-burdened hospitals in states with too little capacity to treat a surge in patients.
Those strategies come as the country is averaging 150,000 new COVID-19 infections each day, a massive spike from the weekly average of 12,000 cases on July 4, when Biden told Americans that the U.S. was “closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus.”
Since then, states across the country have struggled to keep up with hospitals that are filled to capacity. Some strained health care providers in Georgia paused elective surgery this week. The vast majority of those patients are among the nearly 80 million Americans eligible to be vaccinated but who have not yet gotten their first shot.
Biden lauded the three in four Americans who had gotten at least one shot, and said that even with the delta variant wreaking havoc, the path ahead “is not nearly as bad as last winter.”
But he expressed frustration that while the country has tools to combat COVID-19, “a distinct minority of Americans, supported by a distinct minority of elected officials, are keeping us from turning the corner.”
Only 44% of Georgians are fully vaccinated, compared with more than 53% for the nation. Though the state has moved up in state rankings, it is still near the end of the pack, ahead of only West Virginia, Idaho, Mississippi, Alabama and Wyoming in fully vaccinated residents, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data compiled by the New York Times. And vaccine hesitancy is not spread equally throughout the state’s counties.
Kemp has encouraged Georgians to get vaccinated since shots became available to much of the population in the spring, but he has shut down suggestions people be required to get a jab.
Require vaccines or face fines
Altogether, the new vaccine requirements that Biden outlined would affect about 100 million workers, or two-thirds of all workers in the U.S., according to a senior administration official.
The requirement for businesses will be enacted through a new rule in the coming weeks from the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA.
That rule would require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated, or to require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work, according to a summary released by the administration.
Employees would have time to get a vaccine if they have not done so already, likely in line with the 75 days that federal employees will have to get the one- or two-shot vaccines.
Any companies that do not enforce the rule could be issued fines of up to nearly $14,000 per violation, according to a senior Biden official.
Some of the country’s largest corporations, from Tyson Foods to United Airlines, already have announced their own vaccination requirements, and 21 states have some form of vaccine mandate in place, covering state employees, nursing home workers, staffers in schools, or some combination of those employment settings, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
But the requirement still is expected to face intense opposition, particularly in places with high levels of vaccine resistance. At least 11 states have passed some version of a law prohibiting vaccine requirements, according to KFF.
Georgia’s governor has not gone as far in opposing mask or vaccine mandates as some other Republican governors — Iowa, Tennessee, South Carolina, Utah and Oklahoma are facing federal investigations into prohibitions against mask mandates in schools. But Kemp continues to oppose other mandates, including in the University System of Georgia, casting doubts on whether they are effective in stopping the spread of the delta variant.
Georgia Republican congressmen Jody Hice and Austin Scott took to Twitter to blast Biden’s proposed vaccine mandate.
Vaccines should be decisions between patient and doctor — not government.
Vaccine mandates are wrong.
Vaccine mandates with no exemptions are insane.
Some are allergic even to OTC drugs like aspirin.
Forcing 100% of a population to get any medical treatment is crazy!
— Rep. Jody Hice (@CongressmanHice) September 9, 2021
I tested positive for COVID-19 last yr & was in the hospital on 02. I believe the COVID-19 vaccine is safe & effective, but I don’t support a dictatorial COVID-19 vaccine mandate, vaccine passports, or forcing private businesses to give workers PTO to comply w/ Biden’s mandate…
— Rep. Austin Scott (@AustinScottGA08) September 9, 2021
School safety, testing availability
To boost safety in schools, where most K-12 students are not yet eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine, Biden said states need to require teachers and other school staffers to be vaccinated.
So far, nine states and the District of Columbia have vaccination requirements for K-12 staffers.
He also hopes to require employees of the federal Head Start early education program to be vaccinated, along with those working in schools operated by the Department of Defense Schools, and Bureau of Indian Education.
His administration already has launched civil rights investigations in five states that have banned local districts from enacting universal mask-mandates and has reiterated its promise to provide any funding that a state might withhold for violating those bans.
To maintain in-person learning, Biden is urging schools to set up regular testing for students, teachers, and staff consistent with CDC guidance.
His administration also is seeking to make testing more easily available to other Americans. Three major retailers — Walmart, Amazon, and Kroger — have said they will sell rapid, at-home tests at cost for the next three months, which would reduce the price tag of those tests by up to 35%.
The president also is promising more aid to states that have seen the largest burdens from rising hospitalizations.
Biden’s proposal calls for doubling the number of clinician teams that the Department of Defense deploys to support hospitals battling COVID-19 cases. Those federal surge teams have worked in 18 states, according to the administration, sending nearly 1,000 EMTs, nurses and doctors to provide care.
Those teams will continue, according to Biden’s proposal. A new effort will provide monoclonal antibody strike teams, who can offer and train others to offer that key treatment option. New regulatory changes also will expand which providers can administer it, adding pharmacists.
Kemp says unvaccinated should talk to doctor
Kemp said at last week’s press conference Georgia needs to stay focused on spreading the word about vaccines, while also affirming his belief that the choice to get a shot is personal.
“Operation Warp Speed that was created in the Trump administration, in my opinion, is a medical miracle,” he said. “I’m glad I’m vaccinated. I’m glad my whole family’s vaccinated. I know that there are people out there that have vaccine hesitancy for a lot of different reasons.”
Kemp urged those vaccine-resisting Georgians to speak with a medical professional, faith leader or friend who had received the vaccine before making what he called “a medical decision that can possibly save your life.”
“We need to continue to educate and advocate for people getting the vaccine,” he said. “And look, at the end of the day, there’s going to be people that don’t want to do that. And this is America. This is Georgia, and you can do that. But the fact is, you’re going to remain at risk of being in the hospital with COVID-19 and you run the risk of being on a ventilator, and you run the risk of being on a ventilator for two or three weeks and then dying. And that is a decision that everyone is going to have to make.”
Georgia Recorder Editor John McCosh contributed to this report.
