President Joe Biden detailed plans Thursday for combating COVID-19 this winter, particularly in light of the emerging omicron variant.
An unnamed White House senior spokesperson said ahead of the president’s press conference that although current federal vaccine mandates are being reviewed by the courts, the White House is asking businesses to voluntarily follow those deadlines. Monday is the first-shot deadline for the federal government’s healthcare worker vaccine. The Department of Labor’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration’s emergency temporary standard filed last month required that employees at companies with 100 workers or more get fully vaccinated by Jan. 4, 2022, or get tested weekly at the employee’s expense.
“We’re asking businesses to step forward and do what’s right to protect our workers and to protect our communities, which is to put in place some sort of vaccination requirement or testing requirements for the workplace,” the spokesperson said.
“It [the plan] doesn’t include shutdowns and lockdowns but widespread vaccinations and boosters and testing and a lot more,” Biden said at the press conference.
The president outlined key actions for combatting the coronavirus over the next few months, including making booster shots available to all adults, offering more family vaccination clinics, making free at-home tests available that will be covered by private insurers or available at community health centers for the uninsured, increasing surge response teams, strengthen international travel rules for people entering the United States and accelerating efforts to “vaccinate the rest of the world.”
