California and New York City announced on Monday that they will require all government employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or face once a week Coronavirus disease Testing, the Department of Veterans Affairs became the first major federal agency to require medical staff to receive injections.
At the same time, a possible sign is that more and more Americans are receiving increasingly serious health warnings, and the vaccination rate has begun to climb again. If people who have been unwilling to get vaccinated can eventually get rid of the coronavirus, this Brings hope to the country. Vaccination.
Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of Brown University School of Public Health, said that these announcements are “opening the floodgates” because more and more government entities and companies are mandating vaccinations after the nationwide vaccination efforts “struck a wall.”
“Some people find it annoying to wear masks, but the reality is that they are temporary. We can’t do this forever,” he said. “Vaccine authorization must be one of the main ways forward, because they bring us closer to the finish line. Wearing a mask just buys you a little more time.”
In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that all municipal staff-including teachers and police-will be required to be vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 once a week by mid-September. Make the city one of the largest employers in the United States to take such action.
California said that starting next month, it will also require all state workers and millions of health care workers in the public and private sectors to provide vaccination certificates or weekly tests.
One day the VA took action, nearly 60 leading medical and healthcare organizations issued an appeal to healthcare institutions through the American Medical Association to require their employees to be vaccinated.
It is not clear what will happen to employees who refuse to comply. Some unions representing New York municipal workers said the city cannot impose this requirement without negotiation.
The long-term policy of the healthcare industry is to allow employees to be vaccinated in time, such as influenza vaccination every year, but the general rule also allows exceptions for medical reasons (such as allergies).
Elsewhere, St. Louis became the second major city to compulsorily require wearing masks indoors. Regardless of the vaccination status, the order will be re-implemented with Los Angeles.
“For those who are vaccinated, this may be like punishment, punishment for doing the right thing,” Democrat St. Louis County Executive Sam Page said on Monday. “I heard it, and I feel frustrated.”
Former Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen said that President Joe Biden should “lead by example” and impose further authorizations on federal workers and government-administered public places, including airplanes, trains, and federal buildings.
“We need vaccine authorization and vaccine verification,” she said. “We have passed the time for the Biden administration to agree to this. What we are doing is not going to work. Doing more of the same thing is not the answer here.”
Biden extends travel restrictions because Delta variants are rampant in the United States without being vaccinated
So far, the government has advised people who have not been vaccinated to wear masks indoors, but senior officials said over the weekend that they are considering recommending that people who have been vaccinated also wear masks indoors.
“We are heading in the wrong direction,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday.
Wen, who is also an emergency doctor and professor at George Washington University, said public health experts have been worried about this situation for months.
“We are worried that the honor system will not work, people who have not been vaccinated will act as if they have been vaccinated, and people will think that the pandemic is over,” she said. “This is exactly what happened, incredibly frustrating.”
Dr. Albert Ko, an infectious disease expert at Yale University, added that the United States should not be caught off guard after witnessing the delta variant ravaging India in May and then landing in the UK, Israel and other vaccinated countries last month. Public health.
He said: “We have learned many times not to take everything for granted about COVID.”
Jha said Americans should be prepared for another few months of the new coronavirus, which has already claimed nearly 611,000 lives in the United States.
“I really think it will be a wonderful summer, but I underestimated the upcoming misinformation campaign,” he said on Monday. “After more than half a million Americans die, how likely is it that one-third of the country’s people still don’t want to end the pandemic?”
Case surge
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of vaccinations on weekends has increased. It is reported that about 657,000 vaccines were vaccinated on Saturdays and nearly 780,000 vaccinations were vaccinated on Sundays. The 7-day rolling average on Sunday is about 583,000 vaccinations per day, up from about 525,000 vaccinations a week ago.
Public health experts said Monday that the increase in vaccination was encouraging, but warned that it is too early to say whether the millions of unvaccinated people have finally overcome the silence.
Fauci said that as the COVID-19 Delta variant rages, the United States is heading in the “wrong direction.”
“I wish I could say yes, but honestly I don’t know,” Ke said. “There are many places that need to be covered.”
Jha said that when the previous infection factors are taken into account, the United States’ immunity to COVID-19 is about 67%, but it needs to be close to 85% to crush the re-circulating virus.
“So we need more vaccinations. Or more infections,” he said.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the 7-day rolling average of daily new cases in the country in the past two weeks has soared from more than 19,000 on July 11 to nearly 52,000 on July 25.
Health experts say they hope that prominent conservatives and Republicans who have been suspicious of vaccination efforts for months will eventually be willing to help change the status quo.
The House Minority Party whip Steve Scalis and other Republicans in the Republican Doctor Caucus held a press conference in the Capitol late last week to plead with their voters to put lingering doubts aside .
Fox News host Sean Hannity declared on his popular show: “Vaccination is definitely meaningful for many Americans. I believe in science. I believe in vaccination science.”
Jha said that Facebook also needs to better clean up misinformation on its social media platforms.
And the Food and Drug Administration needs to fully approve the COVID-19 vaccine, which has now been urgently approved. He suggested that the last step would give more companies more confidence in enforcing vaccine regulations.
“FDA approval is important,” Jha said. “It’s absurd at this point. The safety and effectiveness of these drugs have been fully proven.”
— Associated Press writer Lindsey Tanner in Three Oaks, Michigan; Alexandra Jaffe and Aamer Madhani in Washington; and Heather Hollingsworth of Mission, Kansas, contributed to this report.
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