President Biden on Thursday added the federal workforce to a growing number of government and private workplaces that are requiring their employees to get vaccinated, often with frequent COVID-19 testing as an alternative, as infections driven by the highly contagious delta variant soar and immunizations have slowed.
Among them:
Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough announced Monday he will make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for all health care personnel who work in Veterans Health Administration facilities, with employees given eight weeks to become fully vaccinated.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday said all 246,000 state workers as well as health care workers throughout the state will be required next month to show proof they either have been vaccinated or that they have tested negative for COVID-19 at least weekly. The state also requires the unvaccinated to wear masks indoors.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday announced a similar policy for his state’s workers starting in September, and that the shots will be required of state hospital workers with no alternative for COVID-19 testing.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday that the city’s 340,000 municipal workers will have to either get vaccinated or tested weekly for COVID-19. A similar policy was imposed on employees at city-run hospitals and clinics in June.
San Francisco in June said it will require all 37,000 of its municipal employees to get vaccinated once the U.S. Food and Drug Administration grants full approval for the vaccines, now being administered under emergency use authorization after an expedited review. The city’s health officer joined those in Santa Clara and Contra Costa counties July 22 in recommending employers adopt policies requiring either vaccination or regular COVID-19 testing.
Santa Clara County on July 22 said it would require all 22,000 of its workers to get vaccinated or submit to regular COVID-19 testing, following recommendations for employers by the county health officer.
San Jose Unified School District said Wednesday it will require vaccination or regular COVID-19 testing for its 2,700 teachers and staff, among the first and largest to adopt such a policy.
Students, faculty and staff across the University of California system this fall will be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 in order to access campuses. There is no option for regular testing instead, but the policy allows for religious, medical and disability exceptions.
All faculty, staff and students across the California State University system also will be required to be vaccinated against the coronavirus to access campuses in the fall, with medical and religious exemptions allowed.
Among private employers, San Francisco business-software firm Salesforce was among the first major technology companies to tie vaccination to in-office work. In May, the company began bringing vaccinated workers into its headquarters on a voluntary basis. On Thursday, a company spokesperson said only vaccinated employees, in groups of 100 or fewer, can work in its U.S. offices for now.
At Google, which started re-opening Bay Area offices and running company worker-shuttle buses July 12, CEO Sundar Pichai said this week in a letter to employees that anyone working on its campuses will have to be vaccinated.
“We’re rolling this policy out in the U.S. in the coming weeks and will expand to other regions in the coming months,” Pichai said in the letter posted on the Mountain View digital advertising giant’s company blog. Implementation of the mandate “will vary according to local conditions and regulations,” Pichai said. The company said there would be an exceptions process for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other protected reasons.
Facebook, which started reopening its Menlo Park campus and other offices in May, is also imposing a vaccination requirement for workers in the U.S., it said this week.
“We continue to work with experts to ensure our return-to-office plans prioritize everyone’s health and safety,” the Menlo Park social media giant’s vice-president of human resources Lori Goler said.
Apple declined to say if it would impose a vaccination requirement for employees, but said Thursday it had returned to requiring masks at work in line with new guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and California Department of Public Health.
Twitter this week reversed its reopening of its San Francisco and New York offices after only two weeks amid the spread of the delta variant of COVID.
Many other private businesses have adopted vaccine or negative COVID test requirements for their customers as well. Bar owners in San Francisco announced Monday they will require customers to show proof they either have been vaccinated or tested negative for COVID-19 to come in for a drink. Several restaurants throughout the Bay Area also have adopted such a policy.