President Biden announced sweeping new vaccine mandates yesterday that will affect tens of millions of Americans, ordering all businesses with more than 100 employees to require their workers to be inoculated or face weekly testing, the Washington Post reported. Biden also will require all health facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding to vaccinate their workforces, which the White House believes will impact 50,000 locations. And the president plans to sign an executive order that would require all federal employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus — without an option for those who prefer to be regularly tested instead — in an effort to create a model he hopes state governments and private companies will adopt. The White House released an 11-page memo Thursday entitled “Path Out of the Pandemic” that outlined six key areas where Biden is either shifting or hardening his strategy on the virus. The most far-reaching is a new regulation to be written by the Labor Department that will requires all businesses with more than 100 employees either to mandate vaccinations for all their workers, or require them to take weekly coronavirus tests. The White House estimates that the policy will impact about 80 million workers, or two-thirds of the country’s workforce.
