Several vaccine mandates across the U.S. were put in place on Monday after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine.
After the vaccine approval, which came following months of safety data analysis, President Joe Biden called on the private sector to "step up with vaccine requirements" in order to slow the virus' spread.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told USA Today a couple of weeks ago that he predicted "a flood" of vaccine mandates once FDA approval was granted.
He said that both public and private organizations that had previously held off from putting mandates in place would "feel much more confident" in doing so following the approval.
Indeed, the day of the approval saw a number of new mandates set up. Oil company Chevron said it would implement a new rule requiring employees who live abroad, travel internationally, and work in the Gulf of Mexico to get a vaccine.
Meanwhile energy company Hess is also putting a vaccine mandate in place, requiring all U.S. operations employees working in the Gulf of Mexico to be fully vaccinated by November 1.
A company spokesperson told Fox Business on Monday the new rules came "given the highly infectious nature of the delta variant and the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S."
Pharmaceutical retail outlet CVS Health also followed suit, announcing that corporate staff and some customer-facing staff would need to be fully vaccinated by October 31 this year, while the company's retail pharmacists would have until November 30.
Karen S. Lynch, CVS Health CEO, said in a press release that the decision was "in direct response to the dramatic rise in cases among the unvaccinated."
A number of health care systems in the state of West Virginia also announced vaccine mandates for workers, including WVU Medicine and Mon Health System, according to West Virginia news outlet WV MetroNews.
Private companies weren't the only organizations to enact new vaccine rules on Monday. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced that every school employee in the state, public or private, would need to be fully vaccinated by October 18 or undergo COVID tests either once or twice a week, local news outlet NJ.com reported.
An even stricter mandate was put in place for all public school teachers and other staff members in New York City, where choosing to take a test instead of getting the vaccine will no longer be an option, reported NPR.
And Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters Monday that the U.S. military will require all service members to be vaccinated to "ensure the safety of our service members and promote the readiness of our force" in a press briefing.
Kirby said a timeline for the vaccine requirements would be set out in the coming days.
While the Pfizer approval may usher in a new wave of mandates, a number of companies had already put them in place long beforehand.
U.S. tech giants Microsoft, Google, and Facebook had already put similar mandates in place, as have airlines, media outlets, and a number of other major firms.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
