Preparing for the Biden Vaccination/Testing Mandate

• In today’s Recommendations for Industry, we discuss President Biden’s COVID-19 employee vaccination/testing mandate and how TAG can help you prepare. Read more below.
• Both NY Times and CIDRAP report on a recent new review in The Lancet finding that “none of the data on coronavirus vaccines so far provides credible evidence in support of boosters for the general population”. As part of the discussion, “Boosters may be useful in some people with weak immune systems, they said, but are not yet needed for the general population”.
• Three states (e.g., Vermont, Connecticut, and Massachusetts) have fully vaccinated more than 2/3 of residents. Over the last week, these three states have the lowest number of new COVID-19 cases per capita (CNN). In Massachusetts, the number of breakthrough cases represents 0.53% of over 4.5M people who have been vaccinated (NBC Boston). Despite this summer surge of the Delta variant of COVID-19, we are finally seeing signs of the variant waning (CIDRAP).
• As part of Boris Johnson’s move to “outline a strategy to prevent any new surge in coronavirus infections from overwhelming the national health service over a winter”, UK health officials have authorized “a mass COVID vaccination program for 12- to 15-year old’s”. The UK is expected to move forward with the campaign using Pfizer’s vaccine.

Seasonal Flu:

• The CDC reports that current laboratory-confirmed flu activity is low!
• The CDC has confirmed two new variant flu cases in Iowa, both of which are of the influenza A variants with infections being in children.

Food Safety & Public Health:

• There is currently a H5N8 avian flu outbreak in Europe (in France, Belgium, and Luxembourg) as well as in Pakistan.
• There is currently a pneumonic plague outbreak in Madagascar.
• Dole is currently recalling fresh curly leaf parsley from five states (Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Missouri) due to positive Shiga-toxin-producing coli.
• A recent study published in JAMA looking at US counties’ non-COVID excess deaths found that those deaths associated with death (not related to COVID) had “less health insurance coverage and primary care as well as more at-home deaths”.
• The FDA has announced the 12 winners of the FDA’s Low- or No-Cost Food Traceability Challenge as part of the FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety Initiative to “achieve end-to-end traceability – from source to table – throughout the food safety system”. The primary goal for this challenge encouraged “stakeholders, including technology providers, public health advocates, entrepreneurs, and innovators from all disciplines to develop traceability hardware, software, or data analytics platforms that are low-cost or no-cost to the end user”. Read more about the winners and their technologies (with videos), here!

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Preparing for the Biden Vaccination/Testing Mandate

With two key components of President Biden’s COVID-19 Action Plan, announced last week, will have significant impact on businesses that have more than 100 employees. The plan mandates that OSHA develop rules through an Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) requiring that these businesses:

1. Ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work.
2. Provide paid time off for the time it takes for workers to get vaccinated or to recover if they are under the weather post-vaccination.

Although we won’t know the full extent of the provisions of the mandate until OSHA develops the rule, the fact that it has been mandated to be an ETS means it is unlikely that we will have to wait long for the issuance. TAG will be tracking its development and providing our perspectives and recommendations once issued.

Until then, however, businesses will benefit from beginning to prepare and consider your options. For example, with the number of unvaccinated persons in the U.S., we would expect that there could be some challenges or shortages in testing resources as there is likely to be high demand which current supply may not be able to support.  There are inherent complexities associated with testing.  Will workers be tested onsite, with what an antigen or PCR test, and how will positives be managed if they’re identified onsite? 

TAG is proactively working to assist businesses in all aspects of the new mandate, tracking the ETS development, assisting customers in preparation, answering business and employee questions, and providing consultation and recommendations. In addition, we are updating the TAG COVID-19 Toolkit with information on the mandate, testing resources, etc. Please contact us if you are interested in attaining the Toolkit.

• In last Thursday’s Recommendations for Industry, we discussed a new COVID-19 treatment. Read more here.
• The most recent report from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) shows that COVID-19 children’s cases are rising in the U.S. In fact, children with COVID-19 account for almost 27% of all reported US weekly cases. In Texas and Florida, the rise in cases is linked highly to schools.
• In today’s WHO briefing, the head of the WHO has “called for a global moratorium on COVID-19 vaccine booster doses to be extended until the end of the year to allow more people in low- and middle-income countries to be vaccinated.” While high-income countries have pledged 1 billion doses, less than 15% of the supply has been sent to needed countries.
• Additionally, similar to what TAG has said before, the WHO says that “COVID-19 is likely ‘here to stay with us’ as the virus continues to mutate in unvaccinated countries across the world.”
• An observational study published in Nature Medicine, yesterday, has found that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to be 96% effective in pregnant women.
• NPR reports that there are new studies finding evidence of ‘superhuman’ immunity to COVID-19 in some individuals.

Food Safety & Public Health:

• Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) aka ‘mad cow disease’ has been detected in two Brazilian meat plants. These are the fourth and fifth cases of BSE detected in 23 years of WHO surveillance.
• The WHO is tracking the Nipah virus in India, a disease which has no known cure or vaccine and a 40 – 75% mortality rate!
• The FDA has updated its numbers on the two Cyclospora outbreaks; there are now over 800 people in 34 states with confirmed infection.
• Additionally, the FDA has no further information on the specific brand or flavor of cake-mix associated with the 12-state coli outbreak.