Tens of millions of American workers will have to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by January 4, otherwise they will have to undergo very regular tests, the administration of President Joe Biden announced Thursday.
This vaccination obligation, which concerns employees of companies of more than 100 people, workers in the medical world and employees of contractors of federal agencies is one of the most radical measures taken by the United States government in an attempt to stem the epidemic that is undermining economic recovery.
“There is the same consistent deadline for these three categories of January 4, 2022,” the date on which employees must either have received their last dose of vaccine or begin to undergo at least one test per week, said Thursday a senior American official.
President Biden unveiled the measure, which is supposed to affect more than two-thirds of the country’s workforce, in September during a speech at the White House. The opportunity according to him to “turn the page” of the coronavirus and tighten the screws for the millions of Americans who still refuse to be vaccinated.
Several companies, including the meat giant Tyson Foods or the airline United Airlines, had already prepared the ground by imposing these obligations on their employees from the end of September.
The latest, the automaker Ford required its 32,000 employees to be vaccinated by December 8 except in the case of religious or medical exemption, according to several US media.
” Save lives “
But in the country of individual freedoms, the measure provokes an outcry in the Republican opposition, which denounces a “dictatorship”.
“The point is, vaccine bonds work,” the senior US official swept aside, predicting that they “would lead to millions of Americans getting vaccinated, protecting workers, saving lives, strengthening our economy and help accelerate our exit from this pandemic ”.
Fueled since the summer by the Delta variant, the pandemic has already killed 750,000 people in the United States.
President Biden, elected as the head of the world’s largest economic power almost a year ago to the day, has made the fight against COVID-19 one of the hallmarks of his presidency.
But the huge American vaccination campaign, carried out with great speed, has run out of steam, boosting contamination rates and partly stemming the economic recovery promised by the Democratic leader.
Convincing reluctant adults to receive the vaccine is no easy task, especially since several American states, including Texas, have already banned vaccine obligations on their soil.
In a survey released last month by the Society for Human Resource Management, 90% of employers surveyed felt it was difficult to implement this vaccine requirement.