Category: Covid-19 Vaccine

Businesses with at least 100 employees will soon be required to mandate that employees get vaccinated against the coronavirus or submit to weekly testing. Employers are still waiting for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to issue an emergency temporary standard (ETS), and some key questions have yet to be answered, but employers can take certain steps now to prepare.

Here's what employers need to know.

ETS Timing

President Joe Biden announced the six-part "Path Out of thePandemic" on Sept. 9. "We're going to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America," he said.

Among other steps, the administration will require most federal employees and federal contractors to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Biden's order eliminated the option for such workers to opt for regular testing instead of vaccination. OSHA's pending ETS, however, will let private-sector employers alternatively allow "any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work," according to the White House.

When will the rule take effect? "Although the timing of when the ETS requirement will go into effect is not clear, it will likely not be a long wait," said KeithWilkes, an attorney with Hall Estill in Tulsa, Okla. The rule is expected to impact more than 80 million private-sector workers.

Ashley Brightwell, an attorney with Alston & Bird in Atlanta, said OSHA may not issue the ETS for another 30 to 60 days.

The ETS can remain in place for six months. "After that time, it must be replaced by a permanent OSHA standard, which must undergo a formal rulemaking process involving a typical notice-and-comment period," according to law firm Fisher Phillips.

Start Planning

In light of the news, Brightwell suggested that employers start encouraging all employees to get vaccinated to make compliance easier once the rule goes into effect.

Ian Carleton Schaefer, an attorney with Loeb and Loeb in New York City, said covered employers need to quickly ramp up their infrastructure in terms of policies, administration and tracking.

Employers also need to decide whether they will mandate vaccination or allow weekly testing as an alternative. "For some employers, collecting and tracking weekly test results may burden them such that they decide to adopt a mandatory vaccination policy," according to Fisher Phillips.

Notably, employers will be required to provide paid time off for workers to get vaccinated and recover from any side effects. Businesses will also have to consider the costs associated with confirming negative test results for unvaccinated employees.

"Regarding the tests themselves, while insurance may cover the cost of tests, several states have laws predating COVID-19 requiring employers to pay for mandatory medical tests or reimburse employees for any such testing," Fisher Phillips said.

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, employers must pay nonexemptemployees for the time spent undergoing testing during the workday. "This likely includes required testing occurring on employees' days off if such testing is necessary to perform their jobs safely and effectively during the pandemic," according to the firm.

Be Ready for Accommodation Requests

OSHA's rule will almost certainly affirm that employers must accommodate employees who refuse to be vaccinated based on a medical exemption or sincerely held religious belief, said Paula Ketcham, an attorney with Schiff Hardi in Chicago.

Erika Todd, an attorney with Sullivan & Worcester, noted that when an employee requests a medical exemption, an employer is entitled to require a reasonable amount of verification to confirm that the employee does have a bona fide medical reason not to be vaccinated. "At the same time, employers must maintain the confidentiality of any medical information they obtain when discussing an exemption," Todd added.

She said religious objections are protected even when they are not supported by a formal religious group, and employers should seek further verification only in rare circumstances if there is a specific reason to doubt that the employee's objection is religion-based. "Notably, political and philosophical objections are not protected by federal anti-discrimination law," she said.

Mixed Reactions to Rule

In addition to potential legal risks, the main concerns employers have had in 2021 regarding vaccine mandates include resistance from employees, the potential impact on company culture and employee morale, and the possibility of losing employees in a tight labor market, according to research from law firm Littler Mendelson.

"The administration's approach will help equalize the playing field and take some pressure off employers who have been concerned about moving too fast or too early in this important area," said Devjani Mishra, an attorney with Littler in New York City.

Schaefer also said the government mandate alleviates some issues surrounding vaccination policies for covered employers that are competing for talent.

Some people have raised concerns about requiring vaccination for those with natural immunity due to a past COVID-19 infection. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), however, is still urging people who already had the coronavirus to get vaccinated and pointed to the results of a recent study highlighting the risk of reinfection. "The study of hundreds of Kentucky residents with previous infections through June 2021 found that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated," the CDC said."The findings suggest that among people who have had COVID-19 previously, getting fully vaccinated provides additional protection against reinfection."

Legal challenges to OSHA's ETS are expected. "Many legal experts have argued that the executive order exceeds President Biden's powers under Article II of the Constitution," noted Stephanie Gaston, an attorney with Bradley Arant Boult Cummings in Houston.

OSHA has the authority to issue emergency temporary standards only if it can show both of the following factors:

According to the Congressional Research Service, "[I]n the nine times OSHA has issued an ETS, the courts have fully vacated or stayed the ETS in four cases and partially vacated the ETS in one case."

Questions Remain

"The details of what the ETS will include are scarce at this point, leaving many questions unanswered," Fisher Phillips said. How will the 100-employee threshold be counted? Will employers be required to collect proof of vaccination? What type of testing will be required? Will remote employees be covered?

Brightwell thinks it unlikely that the ETS will apply to remote workers under the "grave danger" requirement. If employees are not exposed to anyone in the workplace, the risk of contracting COVID-19 is not work-related.

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What to Expect from OSHA on COVID-19 Vaccine and Testing Rules - SHRM

A group called One Washington is holding seminars around the state to instruct people on how to ask for a religious exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine. KUOWs Deborah Wang attended one of their sessions this week.

S

tate employees and health care workers are among those in Washington state who will soon be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 as a condition of their employment.

Although Covid-19 vaccines have proven to be effective at preventing illness or keeping it mild in breakthrough cases, a percentage of people are unwilling to get vaccinated. Washington state law provides an exception for people who have "sincerely held religious beliefs" that prevent them from getting the vaccine.

The group One Washington is holding seminars around the state to instruct people on how to apply for that exemption. The organizers are associated with a church in Gig Harbor called Harborview Fellowship. Early on in the pandemic, the church was in the news after it sued Washington state over emergency orders that prevented churches from holding in-person services.

After Gov. Jay Inslee announced the state would mandate vaccines for certain employees, One Washington organizers said they were inundated with people asking what to do. They began offering seminars in churches, and were soon drawing large crowds. In the past several weeks, they say theyve reached thousands of people around Washington state and in Hawaii, as well.

One of these seminars took place on Wednesday at Island Church on Bainbridge Island. Roughly 100 people attended surprising given the islands liberal bent. No one except this reporter wore a mask at the indoor event, despite a recent uptick in coronavirus cases among unvaccinated people.

Much of the seminar was focused on civics, rather than religion.

State Rep. Jesse Young, a Republican from Pierce County, gave a lengthy presentation arguing the state's vaccine mandate is unconstitutional. He asserted the governor does not have the power to make laws (although the governor's emergency powers are contained in state law including in RCW 43.06.220. The governor's office says it has successfully defended itself against 17 challenges to its authority to act during the pandemic).

Young cited Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made it unlawful to discriminate not just on the basis of race but of religion as well.

The law requires employers to provide "reasonable accommodation" to employees for their sincerely held religious beliefs, as long as they don't create an undue hardship on the employer.

One Washington borrows liberally from the language of the Civil Rights movement; they opened Wednesday's seminar with a quote from Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

They also use language from the abortion rights movement, including my body, my choice.

When it comes to mandating vaccines, "people on the other side have conveniently forgotten they said that," said Mike Jonez, a volunteer chaplain for the Washington State Patrol who co-founded One Washington.

Jonez also denied the group is pursuing an anti-vaccine agenda.

"We are pro freedom of choice," he said.

(Public health experts counter that a number of commonly-accepted practices require people to do things in the name of the community's safety. For example, its against the law to drive your car while you are drunk.)

Many Christian leaders have urged their congregations to be vaccinated, including those in the Catholic Church. The Pope called getting the vaccine an "act of love" and suggested that it's a moral and ethical obligation. Evangelical Christians are an outlier, though, and have higher rates of not being vaccinated, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

One Washington's seminar gave general guidance on applying for a religious exemption, from how to fill out forms from your human resources department, to finding out what reasonable accommodations your employer provides.

They warned people not to fall into any "potentially trapping questions," like whether you have taken medicine or vaccines before. They claim you do not have to "prove" your religion to get an exemption.

"Religion is like a black box," Jonez said. "You just have to have it. You don't need to show it."

The organizers played a video of a woman named Michelle who they said had successfully applied for a religious exemption.

In the video, Michelle suggested that people NOT use the argument that they oppose the vaccines because fetal cells may have been used in their development, because that might change with future vaccines.

In her application, Michelle quoted the Bible: My physical body is a holy temple of my Lord Christ and Savior." She went on to write: "I will not put anything into my body that would violate my religion or my conscience before God.

Finally, the presenters asked people to make a proclamation of faith by inviting Jesus into their lives. They then provided a QR code that would allow them to download a letter from the church with an "affirmation of faith."

Its unclear whether this approach will work.

Every employer has its own process for religious accommodations. The state of Washingtons religious exemption request form asks employees to assert two things:

1) That that you have a sincerely held religious belief or religious conviction that prevents you from receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, and

2) That you have never received a vaccine or medicine from a health care provider as an adult.

These questions present a high bar, and few Christians, other than Christian Scientists, would likely qualify under this standard.

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Avoiding Covid-19 vaccines: A religious group gives Washingtonians tips on how to do it - KUOW News and Information

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded one-year supplemental grants totaling $1.67 million to five institutions, including Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), to explore potential links between COVID-19 vaccination and menstrual changes.

Lauren Wise, professor of epidemiology at BUSPH, and a team of researchers at BUSPH and Boston University School of Medicine (MED), received $300,000 to examine the potential impact of COVID-19 vaccines on menstruation among participants in the BUSPH-based Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO).

PRESTO is an NIH-funded ongoing study that enrolls women trying to conceive, and follows them from preconception through six months after delivery. Since the study's inception, women have reported data about their typical menstrual characteristics while not using hormones, and PRESTO questionnaires have been updated to include questions on COVID-19 infection, vaccination, and pandemic-related stressors. The questionnaires are available in English and Spanish.

For the study, Wise and colleagues will analyze menstruation data collected during up to six menstrual cycles from bimonthly online questionnaires and from Kindara.com, a menstrual charting app. The researchers will examine the association between COVID vaccination and cycle irregularity, cycle length, intensity of bleed, duration of bleed, intermenstrual spotting/bleeding, and pain associated with menses. Two sets of analyses will be performed: one that compares menstrual factors between vaccinated and unvaccinated participants, and one that compares menstrual factors among vaccinated participants before and after vaccination.

Given PRESTO's ongoing prospective data collection throughout the pandemic, recruitment of non-contracepting women from all 50 U.S. states, and prospective collection of menstrual data, the study is uniquely-positioned to analyze data on SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and menstruation and provide essential information to the scientific community and the public on vaccine safety."

Lauren Wise, principal investigator, PRESTO

Some women have reported experiencing irregular or skipped menstrual periods, bleeding that is heavier than usual, and other menstrual changes after receiving COVID-19 vaccines. Numerous factors-;including COVID-19-related infection and stress, and lifestyle changes-;can cause temporary changes in the menstrual cycle, which is regulated by complex interactions between the body's tissues, cells and hormones.

The supplemental grants are funded by NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health.

Other members of Wise's team in the Department of Epidemiology at BUSPH include research assistant professor, Amelia Wesselink; doctoral student, Sharonda Lovett; senior data analyst, Tanran Wang; postdoctoral associate, Mary Willis; research assistant, Martha Koenig; and professors Kenneth Rothman and Elizabeth Hatch; as well as MED researcher Rebecca Perkins, associate professor of obstetrics & gynecology.

Read more from the original source:

BU researchers win NIH grant to examine the impact of COVID-19 vaccines on menstruation - News-Medical.Net

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace repeatedly confronted Republican Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts over his opposition to the Biden administrations new coronavirus vaccine mandates and requirements, highlighting the governors seemingly contradictory position on other vaccines.

After President Joe Biden announced a new series of rules that will mandate all federal employees to be vaccinated and require many private-sector employees to either be inoculated or tested weekly, several Republican governorsincluding Rickettsthreatened to fight the presidents requirements in court.

Have at it, Biden curtly responded to the GOP threats.

Interviewing Ricketts on Fox News Sunday, Wallace asked the governor why he was fighting the administrations new COVID-19 rules, especially since Ricketts insisted that hes been encouraging vaccines and believes they work in combatting the pandemic. The Nebraska governor, meanwhile, said he felt the government shouldnt be mandating vaccinations.

I've talked to a number of people, Rickets declared. They've told me, if they make me take the vaccine, I'm just going to be fired.

Wallace retorted that Nebraskas school system actually requires students to be vaccinated against a series of diseases, wondering aloud why Ricketts appeared to be fine with those requirements but not a mandate for the COVID-19 shots.

You say its a personal choice. In fact, to attend school in your state of Nebraska, children must be vaccinated against a number of diseases. They must be vaccinated against Diptheria, tetanus, and pertussis; polio; measles, mumps, and rubella; Hepatitis B; chickenpox, the veteran anchor said.

If the polio vaccine is okay for parents and they have to comply with it to send their kid to school, why not for a lot of people, not just kids, the vaccine for this disease?

Chris Wallace

Why are those mandates that parents in your state must comply with and do comply with routinelywhy is it that theyre not so objectionable and such a violation of personal freedom but Bidens vaccine mandates are? Wallace continued.

After the Republican governor responded that those other vaccines have a long history of use and that Americans dont know what to trust with the COVID-19 vaccines, Wallace pointed out that the polio vaccine was quickly mandated after it first became available and Americans viewed it as a blessing at the time.

Were in the middle of a pandemic, the Fox News Sunday moderator added. There is a new vaccine that Donald Trump was largely responsible for. Its been approvedfull approvalby the FDA. Again, if the polio vaccine is okay for parents and they have to comply with it to send their kid to school, why not for a lot of people, not just kids, the vaccine for this disease?

Ricketts asserted that the surging coronavirus pandemic is very different from polio before claiming that children are no more at risk for the coronavirus than they are the ordinary flu. He also noted that the majority of COVID-19 deaths in his state were among senior citizens, adding that most state residents over 65 have already been vaccinated.

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Chris Wallace Grills GOP Gov. Pete Ricketts on Oppostion to COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates - The Daily Beast

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Fake COVID-19 vaccine cards are everywhere: Scams, online sales skyrocket with federal mandate - FingerLakes1.com

But those calls are running up against the FDAs caution and crucially a lack of safety and efficacy data. Regulators have already asked vaccine makers to increase the size of their pediatric clinical trials to increase the chances of detecting rare side effects. The first results from one of those studies, Pfizers, are not expected until later this month. And top federal health officials have said they dont expect a vaccine will be available for 5-to-11-year-olds until late fall or winter. Authorization for children as young as six months will come even later.

With cold weather approaching in much of the country, many parents and public health experts see a recipe for disaster. The change in seasons is likely to send more people indoors at a time when the highly contagious Delta variant is circulating and many cities and states have loosened or discarded public health mandates on mask wearing and social distancing.

While children are at a low risk, thankfully, compared to our adults, they arent at no risk meaning that we are seeing children in the hospital. We are hearing of deaths, said Jason Newland, a pediatric infectious disease professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Indeed, hospitalizations among children and teens quadrupled in August in states with low vaccination rates, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released Friday. Hospital admissions for unvaccinated adolescents and for kids 4 and under have each risen tenfold since mid-June, when the Delta variant took hold in the U.S., CDC said.

And while children are less likely to develop severe Covid-19 or die from the virus, Newland said he expects the number of child deaths will rise as more kids are admitted to hospitals following the explosion in cases.

At the heart of the debate over Covid-19 vaccines for kids is the inescapable fact that children arent just little adults. Their immune systems are different than those of adults, and their bodies are smaller and still developing.

Those differences help explain why kids have been less likely than adults to have severe Covid-19, and have suffered rare side effects not seen in older people including the mysterious inflammatory syndrome called MIS-C, which can occur even after mild infections.

But pediatric specialists note that these differences mean that FDA cant lean on the results of vaccine trials in adults to authorize shots for children. Children often need lower doses of drugs than adults do, and they may also experience different and potentially more serious side effects.

Vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna are studying their shots safety and efficacy in younger children and infants, with Pfizer expected to submit results of its 5-to-11-year-olds clinical trial to the FDA this month. Moderna has said its results wont be ready until closer to the end of the year. Both companies are also testing their shots in children as young as six months.

FDA asked the manufacturers in July to increase the size of their kids trials to try to better detect serious side effects like the heart inflammation known as myocarditis, which has surfaced in teens and young adults after vaccination with the Pfizer and Moderna shots. Its unclear whether the agencys request will affect the timing of the companies submissions.

But several doctors told POLITICO that increasing the number of trial participants wont do much to help vaccine makers and regulators identify rare side effects. They said a slightly larger trial size could help assuage parents concerned about the reports of myocarditis and other side effects in older teens.

But the generally low rates of adverse events post-Covid inoculation mean manufacturers likely wont be able to identify rare side effects during the kid trials. And that raises ethical questions about assigning some children enrolled in those trials to a placebo group when a highly transmissible strain of the virus is wreaking havoc nationwide.

Theres always a human price for knowledge, said Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia who co-invented the vaccine for rotavirus, which can cause fatal diarrhea in young children.

Cody Meissner, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at Tufts Childrens Hospital, has urged a conservative approach to approving vaccines for kids, given the myocarditis cases in older teens and young adults and typically low rates of severe outcomes in children.

We want to have a vaccine, he said, but if it causes more problems than it solves if it causes more disease than it prevents I dont think theres a rush to get there.

Like Offit, Meissner is a member of the FDAs advisory committee on vaccination, which provides recommendations that the agency typically follows.

President Joe Biden and some members of his Covid task force have bullishly predicted that some children under 12 could be eligible for the shots this fall. But National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins recently suggested it could take longer for regulators to sign off on vaccinating older kids in that group, saying he doesnt see approval for kids 5 to 11 coming much before the end of 2021.

Peter Marks, the head of FDAs vaccine center, said last month it would take a few weeks at least to assess a vaccine manufacturers trial data before the agency issued an emergency use authorization to use a shot in children.

Even the American Academy of Pediatrics has urged the FDA to speed things up, arguing last month in a letter to acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock that the Delta variant changes the risk-benefit analysis for authorizing vaccines in children. Regulators could authorize the shot for those older kids using already-available data from the initial group enrolled in clinical trials, AAP President Lee Savio Beers said, while continuing to track safety data from the expanded group

The number of children infected has increased exponentially since early summer, AAP said in its Monday update on child cases. Cases have risen fivefold over the past month, the group said, going from about 38,000 in mid-July to almost 204,000 last week.

Children have made up nearly 15 percent of total Covid cases since the pandemic began, AAP said. For the week ending Aug. 26, kids made up 22.4 percent of weekly cases.

Dozens of lawmakers from both parties asked Woodcock on Aug. 17 for a briefing on FDAs regulatory process for authorizing Covid vaccines for young children.

The beginning of the school year was a clear moment that could have been used to educate and disseminate vaccines, said the members, led by Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna and Katie Porter. Now with a late summer surge, the reopening of schools seems likely to increase community spread.

Public health experts agree that children can return to school safely with a multilayered cocooning approach that involves requiring masks, spacing out desks and improving ventilation in classrooms, plus vaccinating the adults and teens in their orbit. But with whole swathes of the country eschewing mask and vaccine mandates, and in some cases prohibiting them, its unclear when the spike in childrens Covid cases will come down.

Polio had no friends," Offit said of the viral disease that paralyzed thousands of U.S. children in the 1940s and 1950s, and has since been eradicated domestically by vaccines. "This virus has a great many friends.

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Calls grow for FDA to speed authorization of kid Covid-19 vaccines - POLITICO

Lazio, the Italian regionaround Rome, is to start administering the third dose of the covid-19 vaccine in the coming days.

"Lazio starts with the third dose of vaccine" - the region's president Nicola Zingaretti wrote on Twitter on Sunday evening - "From next week we will begin with those who have received a transplant."

The move comes days after health minister Roberto Speranza confirmed that the third jab would be given toItaly's"most frail patients" in September, such as cancer and transplant patients, before deciding to continue with the over-80s, nursing home residents and medical workers.

Last week Italy's coronavirus emergency commissioner Francesco Figliuolo said tthe country is on track to reach its target of having 80 per cent of the population over the age of 12 fully vaccinated by the end of September.

Lazio was set to achieve this target over the weekend, according to regional health councillor Alessio D'Amato, who told news agency ANSA on Wednesday that the region's next goal would be to reach 90 per cent vaccinated.

Photo credit: Alessia Pierdomenico / Shutterstock.com.

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Rome region to start giving third dose of covid-19 vaccine - Wanted in Rome

Dr. Nicole Linder has cared for countless COVID-19 patients throughout the pandemic, but one very special patient was on her mind as she spoke with reporters Thursday, Sept. 9, about the need to get more Michiganders vaccinated.

Linder, who serves as chief hospitalist for OSF St. Francis Hospital Medical Group in Escanaba, said she has cared for a patient named Kathy for the last three weeks, who had refused the vaccine adamantly before contracting COVID-19.

The woman voiced regret upon being admitted, and spent her time in the hospital calling friends and family who, like her, had refused to be vaccinated. Linder said Kathy convinced at least six people to get the shot before her condition worsened and she was sent home to spend her final days in hospice care with her family.

It was too late for her, Linder said. Despite everything that could possibly be done for her, shes going to lose her battle and lose her life. And shes vivacious and gregarious and just a wonderful person and this did not have to happen. Her family didnt have to lose her.

Linder shared her patients story, with her permission, but provided limited details. She hugged her and said goodbye earlier this week, noting that her death is imminent and she wanted to be at home with her family when she died.

The Upper Peninsula doctor spoke Thursday about her experience with COVID-19 patients in recent months, the vast majority of whom have declined to get vaccinated and wound up seriously ill from a coronavirus infection. In Delta County, where she works, 53% of residents had gotten a first shot as of Sept. 8, and 57% were fully vaccinated.

Im fatigued, and I am heartsick and Im tired of watching people suffer needlessly and die of a disease that could have been prevented by a simple and safe and effective vaccine, Linder said. I dont want to watch my patients families suffer with the grief of this and also the guilt if they played some role in their family members decision not to be vaccinated.

One of the most common reasons she hears for why people didnt get vaccinated was because they dont want to inject some untested or foreign substance into their body.

I dont think that people realize that if they do become ill enough to be hospitalized, theyre going to be injected with a lot of foreign substances and most of them less proven than the COVID vaccine, she said. ... I think people overestimate the effectiveness of the treatments that we have for COVID in comparison to the vaccine.

Linder noted that full vaccination leaves people with a .001% chance of dying from a breakthrough COVID-19 infection. The available vaccines have gone through rigorous testing and offer significant protection against severe illness and death from COVID-19.

Pfizers two-dose vaccine has been granted full approval for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for individuals 16 year and older. Additional vaccines by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson offer similar protection against severe COVID-19 illness, and have received emergency use authorization following clinical trials and review by an independent advisory committee made up of vaccine and disease experts.

The best treatment for COVID is to never get it in the first place, Linder said. There really arent any miracle cures, despite what some of the media figures have led the public to believe.

As of Tuesday, Sept. 7, about 61% of Michigan residents 12 and older had gotten a first dose of vaccine, and 56.2% had been fully vaccinated. Vaccination rates remain higher among those 50 and older, with the lowest rates coming from teens and those in their 20s and 30s.

Vaccines are readily available at local pharmacies, health systems, clinics, and health departments. To find a vaccine near you, visit Michigans COVID-19 vaccine website or go to VaccineFinder.org.

Read more on MLive:

Weighing the risks of COVID vaccines against the risk of the COVID virus

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School COVID outbreaks quadruple, total clusters climb 18% in Michigan

What we know at this point about natural immunity to COVID-19

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Death is imminent for Michigan woman who opposed COVID-19 vaccination and regretted decision - MLive.com

OKC Mayor encourages residents to get vaccine, wear masks

Early signs of a plateau of COVID-19 cases were replaced over the last few days with a new surge, according to new data released today.

Provided by the OKC-County Health Department

A small but growing number of Oklahoma City businesses and workplaces have announced COVID-19 vaccine policies, either requiring the vaccinations for employment or for patrons wanting to visit or dine in their establishments.

Oklahoma County COVID-19 vaccine tracker: 52% of people fully vaccinated

Some businesses or venues will allow patrons to show proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test in lieu of proof of vaccination. Be sure to check with each venue for its specific policy some specify that only a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) COVID-19 test will be accepted. Those tests are considered the "gold standard" for COVID-19 testing and have a longer turnaround time than a rapid COVID-19 test.

Heres what we know so far:

Ludivine

Civic Center Music Hall

OKC Philharmonic

Can my employer mandate a vaccine?And answers about other vaccine issues in the workplace

OKC Broadway

Tower Theatre and Ponyboy

Opolis

Note:In some cases, venues that don't have vaccination requirements may honor vaccination policies put in place by individual artists, bands or tours.

Biden COVID plan: Biden to require vaccines or weekly COVID tests to businesses with more than 100 employees

Several Oklahoma hospital systems are requiring COVID-19 vaccinations (or an approved exemption) for their employees, providers and volunteers. Those include:

OU Health

SSM Health

Mercy

Integris Health

Many of Oklahoma's biggest businesses aren't mandating vaccines for employees.Here's why that could change.

Are we missing something from this list? Email reporter Dana Branham at dbranham@oklahoman.com.

The rest is here:

See where COVID-19 vaccinations are required in the Oklahoma City area - Oklahoman.com

AMHERST, Mass. (WWLP) Amhersts Board of Health voted unanimously to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the list of mandatory inoculations for students attending public schools.

Michael Morris, Superintendent of the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District shared the information in a tweet, writing: The Board of Health adds vaccination against COVID-19, using vaccines that have received full FDA approval, to the list of vaccinations that are required (except for medical or religious exceptions) for students to attend public schools in Amherst.

Morris added that the matter will be discussed by the Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee at their next meeting on September 23.

Currently, the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine has full FDA approval for people aged 16 and older, while the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are awaiting full FDA approval. The Pfizer shot has emergency use authorization for children aged 12-15. Clinical trials are underway for COVID vaccines in children under 12, with emergency use authorization possible this winter.

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Amherst Board of Health votes to add COVID-19 vaccine to school vaccination requirements - WWLP.com