WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday is toughening COVID-19 vaccine requirements for federal workers and contractors as he aims to boost vaccinations and curb the surging delta variant that is killing thousands each week and jeopardizing the nation’s economic recovery.
Just weeks after he mandated federal workers get a shot or face rigorous testing and masking protocols, Biden will sign a new executive order to require vaccination for employees of the executive branch and contractors who do business with the federal government, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The word comes ahead of the president’s speech Thursday afternoon outlining a six-pronged plan to address the latest rise in coronavirus cases and the stagnating pace of COVID-19 shots.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Biden’s order includes exceptions for workers or contractors seeking religious or medical exemptions from vaccination. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Biden’s plans before they were publicly released.
Biden is also expected to outline plans to increase virus testing in schools, in an effort to keep them open safely, amid other measures to show that his administration is working to tackle the alarming rise in COVID-19 cases, which Biden has blamed for last month’s weaker-than-expected jobs report. He’s warned the surge could further imperil the nation’s economy as some pandemic safety net protections expire.
Biden has encouraged COVID-19 vaccine requirements in settings like schools, workplaces and university campuses, and the White House hopes the strengthened federal mandate will inspire more businesses to follow suit.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Health and Human Services, the Indian Health Service, and the National Institute of Health have previously announced vaccine requirements for much of their staffs, and the Pentagon moved last month to require all servicemembers to get vaccinated.
More than 208 million Americans have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 177 million are fully vaccinated, but confirmed cases of the virus have shot up in recent weeks to an average of about 140,000 per day with on average about 1,000 Americans dying from the virus daily, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
An AP-NORC poll conducted in August found 55% of Americans in favor of requiring government workers to be fully vaccinated, compared with 21% opposed.
Most of the spread — and the vast majority of severe illness and death — is occurring among those not yet fully vaccinated against the virus. So-called breakthrough infections in vaccinated people occur, but tend to be far less dangerous.
Federal officials are moving ahead with plans to begin administering booster shots of the mRNA vaccines to bolster protection against the more transmissible delta variant of the virus. Last month Biden announced plans to make them available beginning on Sept. 20, but only the Pfizer vaccine will likely have received regulatory approval for a third dose by that time. Federal regulators are seeking additional data from Moderna that will likely delay its booster approval until October.
Officials are aiming to administer the booster shots about eight months after the second dose of the two-dose vaccines.
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© 2021 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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So Joe is amping up the war on COVID. Maybe he should enlist the aid of Milley and Austin—they were outstanding in Afghanistan.
COVID and climate change—the two things he really can’t do anything about—seems to be all he is focused on. But they offer him the greatest amount of praise and accolades if he were able to do anything about them. Unattainable notoriety at the expense of everything else.
Impeach Biden
Here’s my plan..
1) Take everyone of these traitors, and LAUNCH THEM and their entire bloody families, into space.
2) Take every business, uni, or school, that is mandating everyone get the shot, REGARDLESS of what medical issues they may have that makes it where they can’t, and GIVE EVERYONE of the hacks there, a shot of PURE OXYGEN…
3) Take all these media bruchs, who keep hyping this balloney, and Permanently remove their vocal cords!
4) Open the nation back up!
See what the vaccine did to bozo joe. These politicians really believe they have Americans in their hands and now are trying to mold them into satanic entities as they also are. I’ll take my chances in getting a virus vs; letting someone give me an injection with
God knows what in it! After what these demons did to our 2020 election they are completely clueless if they believe we are going to allow our selves and our families to be test dummies for experimental purposes.
When someone asked me why I didn’t take the jab I said that I did not want to be a lab rat.
we can not survive as a nation with 3.5 years of chaiman mao biden and his demons from hell.
we are doomed.
Part of me hopes we can, but fear we won’t.
We have now heard the Biden plan. It is a plan to deny American Civil rights in favor of a dictatorship headed by a brainless clown in the White House.
This is outrageous.
This is stupid.
This is a revolution which MUST be stopped.
AND where the hell are the GOP??!
It is time for anyone, vaccinated or not, who values the freedoms given by God and recognized in the US Constitution to push back against these mandates. We are fast approaching the situation in 1934 Germany.
When will those who are not vaccinated be forced to wear a badge to that effect? How will you feel, even if vaccinated, if your elderly mother is one of those wearing that badge because she can’t take the vaccine due to health issues? What about those who actually had COVID and could get sicker from the vaccine because of it? Will they be setting up interment camps? How will they enforce all this?
Psaki explicitly stated that those in the federal government who don’t comply will first be given ‘counseling’ and then, if they still don’t comply will be ‘disciplined’. People need to open their eyes to what is actually going on here!
THe time to start watering the tree of liberty, HAS LONG PAST Imo.