Biden ramps up vaccine mandates in Covid battle

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Thursday announced a major escalation in the national Covid immunization campaign with strict new vaccination rules affecting tens of millions of workers, as he hardened his tone towards Americans who refuse the shots.

The six-point plan targets businesses with more than 100 employees, in the United States’ most aggressive steps taken so far against the surging Delta variant.

“A distinct minority of Americans supported by a distinct minority of elected officials are keeping us from turning the corner,” the Democratic president said in a televised address from the White House.

“The unvaccinated overcrowd our hospitals, are overrunning emergency rooms and intensive care units, leaving no room for someone with a heart attack or pancreatitis or cancer,” he added.

The most expansive of the actions involves requiring private companies with more than 100 workers to ensure they are vaccinated or tested weekly. The federal measure will impact an estimated 80 million people.

Republican lawmakers immediately slammed the administration and claimed it was overstepping its authority.

“Sounds a lot like a dictatorship,” House Republicans tweeted on their official account. The plan also mandates vaccinations for all federal employees and contractors. Currently, government workers either need to have a vaccine or submit to regular testing, whereas the new rule will enforce virtually total vaccination.

Some 17 million health care workers at facilities receiving government Medicare or Medicaid program funding will also require vaccination.

Only exemptions will be allowed for religious reasons or for people with disabilities — a strict approach sure to put Biden on a collision course with right-wing media and other powerful groups arguing that mandates amount to an attack on individual freedoms.

For its part, the US Chamber of Commerce “will work to ensure that employers have the resources, guidance and flexibility necessary to... comply with public health requirements,” its executive vice president Neil Bradley said.

Some 80 million Americans remain unvaccinated. Research shows they tend to be younger, less educated, and more likely to be Republican. White people account for the largest share of people who remain unvaccinated, but Black and Hispanic people are less likely than their white counterparts to have received a vaccine, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.