Biden to mandate vaccine or tests for federal workers: report
He may be done biding his time.
President Biden on Thursday will announce a requirement that all federal government workers receive vaccinations or face recurrent coronavirus testing, according to CNN.
An unnamed source said the mandate would also cover federal government contractors but would not immediately touch the U.S. military, CNN reported Tuesday.
The move would amount to a major escalation in federal efforts to force Americans to receive shots amid a lagging vaccination campaign, a spike in cases and concerns about the potently contagious delta variant.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily News.
As of Monday, a hair under half of all Americans had been fully vaccinated, according to CDC data. And the country’s rolling seven-day average of COVID cases had more doubled in under two weeks.
On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed course on its relaxed indoor mask guidelines, advising that Americans keep their faces covered in schools and in areas of high COVID transmission.
Biden has appeared reluctant to institute strict vaccine requirements, but he acknowledged on Tuesday that a new mandate for federal workers was “under consideration.”
“If you’re not vaccinated, you’re not nearly as smart as I thought you were,” the president said. “We have a pandemic because of the unvaccinated.”
