By Courtney Buble
May 1, 2023 - Government Executive
The White House announced on Monday it's officially ending the COVID-19 vaccine mandates for federal employees and contractors when the public health emergency ends on May 11.
Both requirements have already been on pause for a while due to legal challenges. The White House also announced that the Health and Human Services and Homeland Security Departments are going to start the process to end their vaccine requirements for international travelers, Head Start educators and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services-certified facilities. More guidance will be issued in the coming days for these.
“Following a whole-of-government effort that led to a record number of nearly 270 million Americans receiving at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, we are in a different phase of our response to COVID-19 than we were when many of these requirements were put into place,” said the White House.
The vaccine mandates for federal employees and contractors were issued in September 2021, with options for religions and medical exemptions. For federal employees, as of early December 2021, the White House said the federal government had a 97.2% compliance rate with the mandate and 92.5% of employees had received at least their first vaccine dose.
The vaccine mandates/requirements from the Biden administration did not include booster shots.
In January 2022, the Supreme Court considered challenges to the CMS vaccine mandate and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's vaccinate-or-test rule for large employees. The latter was blocked.
Included in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2023, which President Biden signed in late December, was a repeal of the military’s vaccine mandate.
According to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, 73.4% of the U.S. population ages five years old and above have completed their primary vaccine series and 17.8% of the same population has received their updated (bivalent) booster.