On September 9, President Biden announced a new federal vaccine requirement that will impact around 80 million American employees as part of a larger strategy to curb the resurgent COVID-19 pandemic that is threatening the nation’s hospital systems, including hospital systems in Washington. The new rules, being promulgated through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), are likely to impact a number of Washington cities, including some of those that originally did not plan on implementing their own vaccine mandates.

While OSHA has yet to finish drafting the new emergency temporary standards, the President has outlined how the rules are expected to function. Under the expected rules, all employers with 100 or more employees will need to ensure that their workforces are either fully vaccinated for COVID-19 or are having unvaccinated employees submit to weekly COVID testing. There are still several questions that will need to be answered by the complete rules, but in Washington State both public and private employers will likely be subject to this vaccine/testing requirement, including cities with 100 or more employees. Over 50 cities in Washington currently have more than 100 employees.

President Biden’s announcement also amended several of his other national vaccination policies. This includes requiring workers at healthcare facilities that receive federal Medicare and Medicaid dollars (with around 17 million employees) to be fully vaccinated. The President is also amending his previous federal employee vaccine policy to require federal workers and contractors to be fully vaccinated without the option to test out. Medical and religious exemptions will still be allowed. Between these changes and the upcoming new OSHA rules outlined above, around 100 million Americans will likely fall under some sort of vaccination or regular COVID-19 testing requirement.

According to the CDC, as of September 13 around 76% of American adults (age 18+) have at least one dose of COVID vaccine, with about 65% being fully vaccinated. In Washington, around 74% of adults (age 16+) have at least one dose, with around 67% being fully vaccinated. Local vaccination rates vary greatly by region or county both nationally and statewide. COVID vaccines are available in Washington to anyone age 12 and up at no cost. City employees and their families that want to get vaccinated can use the state Department of Health’s Vaccine Locator tool to find a COVID vaccine site near them.

AWC will continue to follow the development of federal and state workplace COVID rules as they progress.