Biden Administration to End Federal COVID-19 Vaccine Requirements as National Emergency Ends

WASHINGTON DC—The Biden administration will end most of the last remaining federal COVID-19 vaccine requirements next week when the national coronavirus public health emergency ends, the White House said Monday.

Vaccine requirements for federal workers and contractors, as well as foreign air travelers to the US, will end on May 11. The government is also beginning the process of eliminating immunization requirements for Head Start educators, health care workers, and non-citizens at US land borders.

The requirements are among the last vestiges of some of the most coercive measures taken by the federal government to promote vaccination as the deadly virus raged, and their end marks the latest sign of how President Joe Biden’s administration is moving forward. to treat COVID-19 as a routine and endemic disease.

“While I think these vaccine mandates had a tremendous beneficial impact, we are now at a point where we think it makes a lot of sense to lower these requirements,” COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told The Associated Monday. from the White House.

Deeply polarized at the time and the subject of numerous legal challenges, many of which were successful, Biden imposed the vaccination requirements in successive waves in late 2022 as the nation’s vaccination rate leveled off even amid the emergence of new more transmissible variants of COVID -19.

More than 100 million people at one time were covered by Biden’s sweeping mandates, which he announced on September 9, 2021, as the delta variant of the virus was sickening more people than at any time up to that point in the pandemic. . Biden had scrapped such requirements before taking office in January, but went so far as to adopt them to change the behavior of what he saw as a stubborn section of the public who refused to be vaccinated, saying they endangered the lives of others and the recovery of the nation’s economy.

“We have been patient. But our patience is wearing thin and his refusal has cost us all,” Biden said at the time. The unvaccinated minority “can cause a lot of harm, and it is.”

Federal courts and Congress have already reversed Biden’s vaccine requirements for large employers and members of the military.

The mandates for many employees of the National Institutes of Health, the Indian Health Service and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which implemented their own requirements for health care personnel and other White House independents, will remain while those agencies review their own requirements, the administration said.

More than 1.13 million people in the US have died from 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. Disease Prevention. That was the lowest weekly number of deaths from the virus since March 2020.

“COVID is still a problem,” Jha said. “But our health care system or public health resources are much better able to respond to the threat that COVID poses to our country and to 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 needed 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 a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC.

Doctor Ricardo Correa explains what the COVID-19 emergency means on May 11. Valeria Aponte Feliciano moderates the interview.

For more than a year, US health officials have been looking at a long-term response to COVID-19 that is more similar to the approach for influenza, with annually updated vaccines targeting the latest strains of the virus, particularly for the most vulnerable. But fewer than 56 million people in the US, or 17% of the population, have received a dose of the updated bivalent boosters that became available in September 2022 and provide better protection against the omicron variants that remain in circulation.

“We don’t have a national mandate for flu vaccines in the same way, and yet we see pretty 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 mandates are necessary for Americans to get vaccinated against COVID in the future.”

As federal mandates end, Jha predicted 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 shot requirement for employees for 20 years.

Jha dismissed concerns that removing the vaccination requirement for international travelers would increase the risk of a new variant from abroad entering the US. Biden has already rolled back virus testing requirements for US citizens and foreign travelers to the US.

Jha said the US was already protected by a genomics surveillance program for travelers, which, for example, tests for different virus strains in airplane wastewater.

“We think we are much better able to identify if a new variant appears in the US and respond effectively,” he said. “And I think that’s what makes the need for a travel vaccination mandate less necessary at this time.”