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  • 2021-08-24 (xsd:date)
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  • Are White House Staff and Vaccine Company Employees Required to Get Vaccinated for COVID? (en)
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  • In August 2021, various memes claimed to show a list of employers not requiring their employees to get vaccinated for COVID-19, including staff in the White House, CDC, FDA, WHO, Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson (the latter three are pharmaceutical companies that provide COVID vaccinations to the public). The phrase White House vaccine mandate trended on Google around the same time. A reader sent in this screenshot: It's true that, as of August 2021, these organizations did not require staff to be vaccinated for COVID. However, guidelines changed over time as the delta variant raged across the country. The vast majority of hospitalizations were in unvaccinated patients. On July 29, 2021, the Biden White House announced a vaccine mandate. It said that every federal government employee and onsite contractor will be asked to attest to their vaccination status. People who work at the White House, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are all federal employees. Further, anyone who does not attest to being fully vaccinated will be required to wear a mask on the job no matter their geographic location, physically distance from all other employees and visitors, comply with a weekly or twice weekly screening testing requirement, and be subject to restrictions on official travel. While these were the initial guidelines, the Biden administration later provided an update with an announcement on Sept. 9. The Associated Press reported that vaccines would be required with no further option of regular testing. The AP also reported that federal workers and contractors will have 75 days to get fully vaccinated, and that anyone who doesn't comply will be referred to their agency’s human resources department for counseling and discipline, to include potential termination. According to The New York Times, this did not include those who work for Congress or the federal court system. We contacted the White House to receive any further updates since this announcement was made, and will update this story should we receive a response. We contacted the World Health Organization (WHO) to ask if it had a vaccine policy. In response, WHO spokesperson Dr. Margaret Harris told us: In line with UN Medical Directors consensus opinion, COVID-19 vaccination is strongly encouraged but is currently not mandatory for personnel. Pfizer responded to our email with a statement that described an option of being vaccinated or participating in regular weekly COVID-19 testing. We did not yet hear back from a spokesperson from Moderna. However, 11Alive.com also reported on the viral meme, and linked to the company's website. In a statement, Moderna published that the company will require COVID-19 vaccination for all workers in the United States, effective October 1, 2021. In an email response from Johnson & Johnson, the company shared this statement that bore similarities to Moderna's decision to require all employees to be vaccinated by early October: In sum, here's what we found regarding the viral meme. Following a Sept. 9 announcement from President Biden, staff at the White House, as well as a majority of federal workers and contractors, will be required to be vaccinated. Also, both Moderna and Johnson & Johnson announced plans to require the immunization for their employees by early October. However, as of September, workers with the WHO and Pfizer were not required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. In light of these updates that have occurred over time, the rating on this fact check has been updated from True to Mixture. (en)
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