COVID-19 vaccine mandates likely to accelerate

Now that the FDA has approved the BioNTech-Pfizer vaccine for those 16 and older, it is likely that vaccine mandates will become more common.

Following the approval of the vaccine, the Pentagon, CVS, Chevron, Disney World, New York and New Jersey schools, and other organizations have signaled their intent to enforce vaccine mandates.

Yesterday, President Joe Biden called on a variety of organizations to pursue vaccine mandates. “If you’re a business leader, a non-profit leader, a state or local leader, who has been waiting for full FDA approval to require vaccinations, I call on you now to do that,” he said.

“The pandemic of the unvaccinated is a tragedy that is preventable,” Biden said. “People are dying and will die who don’t have to.” People who haven’t been vaccinated should “do it now,” he urged.

The FDA approval makes moot restrictions on vaccine mandates in Texas, Utah and Montana, which cited the emergency use authorization of COVID-19 vaccines as a valid justification for refusing vaccination. For instance, an executive order from Texas governor Greg Abbott stated that receiving “a COVID-19 vaccine under an emergency use authorization is always voluntary in Texas and will never be mandated by the government.

But such mandates have ramped up throughout the country and within the federal government with the Delta variant.

Some of the areas that have blocked vaccine mandates have grappled with pronounced surges in infections.