US President Joe Biden announced a new package of measures to counter the outbreak of the Corona virus, which includes obligating workers in major companies to take the vaccine or conduct a weekly examination.
The measures, which include a mandate to vaccinate millions of federal employees, come at a time when the US President is under pressure due to the rise in Corona virus infections.
The virus has killed 650,000 Americans. Biden had promised a “summer of freedom” without the virus, but the spread of the new variant “Delta” prevented that.
In a speech from the White House on Thursday, Biden asked the Department of Labor to require all private companies with 100 or more employees to mandate vaccination or provide evidence of a negative screening result for unvaccinated employees at least once a week.
This measure will affect about 80 million people
Announcing the six-point plan, Biden said, “It’s not about freedom or personal choice, but about protecting you and those around you.”
He announced that similar measures will also affect about 17 million people in the health sector, who work in facilities that benefit from federal benefits.
The Department of Occupational Safety and Health at the Ministry of Labor will announce, in the coming weeks, details of the new procedures.
Non-compliant companies could face fines of thousands of dollars for breaching the new measures.
A separate federal mandate would rescind Biden’s previous directive that allowed government employees to run periodic virus tests if they did not want to get the vaccine.
And those who refuse to take the vaccine may be fired from work, under the new mandate that the White House said affects two and a half million government workers.
The virus continues to claim the lives of thousands of unvaccinated Americans. About 80 million Americans remain without a vaccine, wiping out Biden’s hope of containing the epidemic.
But the number of deaths is still low, compared to last winter, despite the high number of injuries due to the new delta mutant.
In his speech Thursday, Biden said, “What makes it so frustrating is that a minority of Americans are preventing us from getting past the juncture.”
