US to raise Covid-19 vaccine requirements next week, White House says | World news

The Biden administration will complete most of its last remaining COVID-19 vaccine requests next week when the national public health emergency for the coronavirus ends, the White House said Monday.

Immunization requirements for federal employees and federal contractors, as well as foreign air travelers to the U.S., will expire on June 11. The government is also beginning the process of lifting the immunization requirements for Head Start educators, staff health, and non-citizens at US land borders. .

The questions are among the last steps in some of the more coercive measures taken by the federal government to promote the vaccine as a deadly virus, and their conclusion is the latest indication of how President Joe Biden’s administration is moving to protect COVID-19 is a chronic, endemic disease.

“While I believe these vaccination orders have a huge beneficial impact, we are at a point where we think it makes a lot of sense to drop these requirements,” White House COVID-19 Director Dr. Ashish Jha told The Associated. Click on Monday.

Deeply shaken at the time and the subject of several legal challenges – many of which were successful – the vaccination requirements imposed by Biden in subsequent waves at the end of 2022 as the national vaccination rate appeared even amid the trend of newer, more transmissible variants of COVID-19.

More than 100 million people at one time were covered by Biden’s executive order, which was announced on September 9, 2021, as the delta variant of the virus sickens more people than at any time up to that point. in the pandemic. Biden had dismissed such demands before taking office in January, but sought to get them to change the behavior of what he saw as a stubborn slice of the public that refused to comply, saying they destroy the lives of others and the economy of the country. recovery

“We have been patient. But our patience wears thin, and his denial has cost us all,” Biden said at the time. Unvaccinated minorities “can cause a lot of damage, and they do.”

Federal courts and Congress have reversed Biden’s immunity requirements for large employers and military service members.

The orders are for several employees of the National Institutes of Health, the Indian Health Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs – which implement their own requirements for health workers and others independent of the White House – will remain while those companies review their own requests, the administration said. .

More than 1.13 million people in the US have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began more than three years ago, including 1,052 people in the week ending April 26, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s the lowest weekly death toll from the virus since March 2020.

“COVID continues to be a problem,” Jha said. “But our health system or public health resources are very capable of responding to the threat that COVID poses to our country and do so in a way that does not cause problems with access to care for Americans.”

He added, “Some of these emergency powers are no longer necessary in the same way.”

More than 270 million people in the US, or just over 81% of the population, have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC.

For more than a year, US health officials have been looking at a long-term response to COVID-19 similar to the approach to influenza, with annually updated shots targeted at new strains of the virus — especially for the worst. But at least 56 million people in the US, or 17% of the population, have received a dose of updated bivalent boosters that are available in September 2022 and provide better protection against omicron variants that are in circulation.

“We don’t have a national mandate for flu vaccines in the same way, and yet we see very good uptake of flu vaccines,” Jha said. “The goal here really is to continue to encourage people to get vaccinated, but I don’t think the mandates will be necessary for getting Americans vaccinated against COVID in the future.”

While federal orders are ending, Jha predicts that some employers, especially medical facilities, may decide to maintain their COVID-19 vaccination requirements. He noted that the hospital where he practices has had a flu vaccination requirement for employees for 20 years.

Jha dismissed concerns that the end of the international traveler vaccination requirement would increase the risk of a new strain from overseas entering the U.S. Biden has already rolled back virus testing requirements for Americans and foreign travelers to the U.S.

Jha said the US is already covered by a traveler genomic surveillance program, which, for example, tests for different virus strains in airline sewage.

“We think we are much more able to identify if a new variant appears in the United States and respond effectively,” he said. “And I think that’s what makes the need for a vaccination mandate for travelers less important now.”