President Biden announced Thursday that all federal employees must either be vaccinated or else face new testing, masking and distancing rules, as the highly transmissible delta variant spreads and vaccination rates in the United States have slowed.
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Under the new rules, which will impact more than 4 million Americans, federal employees and contractors both in the United States and overseas will be required to share their vaccination status. Those who aren’t vaccinated won’t be fired, but they will face restrictions aimed at encouraging them to take a vaccine. Biden also directed Defense Department officials to consider adding the coronavirus vaccine to the list of required inoculations for members of the military.
The Biden administration had hoped to get at least 70 percent of the public vaccinated by early July, but parts of the U.S. are still nowhere close to that goal. Overall, around half of the country is fully vaccinated.
Biden presses federal workers to get coronavirus vaccine, announcing new testing, masking and distancing rules for those who refuse
The vaccination rules for federal workers mark an escalation in efforts to incentivize vaccination as a new covid-19 wave mounts.
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They are part of a growing trend around the world to require — or nearly require — vaccinations for certain categories of people to stem the tide of variant-fueled infections and get the pandemic under control.
Vaccination requirements have proven highly controversial, with some public health leaders and health workers calling for mandates in some cases, while some international human rights groups have raised concerns. In many developing countries, meanwhile, demand for vaccines still outpaces supply.
Here’s how four countries have handled vaccination requirements.
Indonesia
Indonesia made coronavirus vaccinations mandatory in February, as southeast Asia faced a devastating coronavirus wave.
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All people eligible to take the shots must receive them, the government said, and those who refuse can face sanctions including fines and the suspension or delay of social assistance programs and government services, Bloomberg News reported. Local governments have the power to decide on the punishments.
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Indonesia kicked off its vaccination campaign in mid-January when President Joko Widodo became the first Indonesian to receive the Chinese Sinovac vaccine. By mid-February, when the mandate was announced, Indonesia had administered more than 1.7 million shots in a population of around 276 million. The government hopes to inoculate more than 180 million people by next March, according to the Associated Press.
Critics condemned what they called a heavy-handed approach that would penalize poor residents, and they raised concerns about the efficacy of the Sinovac vaccine — the only one available at the time.
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Amnesty International said last year that states “must not impose blanket mandatory vaccine policies” and that the international rights group “strongly opposes the use of the criminal law” to punish those who refuse to be inoculated.
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More than five months into the mandate, roughly 19 million people — or about 7 percent of the population — are fully vaccinated.
It’s unclear how effective a blanket mandate can be when the country only has enough vaccines to inoculate a fraction of its population. About 119 million doses of the Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines had arrived by the end of last month, and the United States donated 4.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine in July.
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The delta variant has fueled an enormous surge in infections in Indonesia in recent weeks, stretching the health system to its breaking point. Health workers have been among the hardest hit, despite being prioritized for vaccinations. In total, the country has reported around 3.3 million cases and more than 90,000 deaths.
Indonesia faces ‘catastrophic’ covid storm as delta variant rips through hospitals
A city outside of Jakarta held a mass vaccination event for 25,000 people in late June as part of the country’s effort to ramp up daily vaccinations to 1 million doses in July and 2 million in August, the AP reported.
Turkmenistan
If you’re 18 or older and you live in Turkmenistan, you’re required to get a coronavirus vaccine, unless you have a medical exemption.
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That’s according to a Health Ministry announcement earlier this month in the Central Asian country, as cases in the wider region were spiking, Reuters reported. The bizarre twist: Turkmenistan has officially reported no coronavirus cases or deaths.
The autocratic country, which is sandwiched between Iran and Uzbekistan, continues to deny that the virus is circulating there, and sought to stifle contradictory views. Still, for months it imposed restrictions that closed restaurants and banned bus and train travel between regions, Agence France-Presse reported.
The country has procured vaccines from Russia and China, according to Reuters. Data that might shed insight into the progress of its vaccination campaign is hard to come by. And the government’s figure for the country’s total population — roughly 6 million — is contested. The last WHO update on the country’s vaccination campaign came in April, by which point roughly 42,000 vaccine doses had been administered.
Russia
Desperate to boost low vaccination rates in a country that is producing plenty of local Sputnik V doses, Russian authorities have placed the onus on businesses.
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In late June, Moscow’s mayor ordered employers in key service and retail industries to ensure at least 60 percent of employees were fully inoculated by mid-August. Dozens of provinces followed.
Employers who fail to meet the target could face harsh punishments, and workers who refuse vaccines face threats of suspension.
When the rules started taking shape, 11 percent of Russians had been fully vaccinated, even though Russian vaccines are free and have been widely available for months. Now, that rate stands at 16.4 percent.
Want to skip the vaccine in Russia? You could be suspended from work.
Several hundred people rallied against vaccine mandates Monday at a Communist-led rally in Moscow. A survey by the Moscow-based research and employment agency Superjob on July 21 found that 55 percent of Russians opposed mandatory inoculation. Many employers have said that the government — not businesses — should be responsible for meeting vaccination targets.
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Widespread hesitancy about the vaccine remains: Another survey this month found that roughly a third of Russians were unwilling to take the vaccine under any circumstances, while 26 percent would only do so if it was required to keep working or get hired.
Changes in official messaging and disinformation have fueled hesitancy, as has Russians’ distrust of authorities.
France
French lawmakers approved a controversial law on Monday that will give vaccinated people privileged access to restaurants, cafes, transportation between cities and other places beginning in August.
People wishing to enter those venues will be allowed to provide a recent negative coronavirus test or proof of immunity through infection — but everyone else will be banned.
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French President Emmanuel Macron said the goal of the “health pass” is to drive up vaccination rates that had started to level off. Health-care workers will be required to be inoculated, and can be suspended if they have not been vaccinated by Sept. 15.
How vaccine-skeptic France and Germany came to support near-mandates
The measures appeared to have had an immediate effect. After Macron announced them two weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of French residents booked appointments for their first shot within hours. Booking platforms called the surge a record.
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About 60 percent of the population has now received at least one dose in a country previously known as one of Europe’s most vaccine-skeptical nations. A recent poll showed that 76 percent of French people view the vaccination requirement for health workers favorably.
But the moves also generated a backlash from those who argue they go against France’s bedrock principles of liberty and equality. Around 160,000 protested the changes last Saturday, and far-right leader Marine Le Pen called the plan “an attack on freedoms and equality between citizens.”
Greece and Hungary also announced plans this month to require that health-care workers be immunized. Italy has had a vaccine mandate in place for health workers, including pharmacists, since early April, after the country discovered clusters of infections in hospitals where staff refused to take the vaccine.