Will a COVID-19 vaccine be required to bring workers back to the office? – Insurance Business

The goal of this vaccination strategy, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the Biden administration, is to achieve widespread or herd immunity by the fall of 2021, which would require vaccinating as many as 280 million people.

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One issue of great importance to the US business community, and something that every single company is grappling with at the moment, is the question of whether employers will have to, or will be able to, require their employees to get the COVID-19 vaccine before theyre allowed to return to work in an office. Joan Woodward, president of the Travelers Institute and EVP of Public Policy at Travelers, discussed this in the institutes Wednesday With Woodward webinar on The Race to Distribute a COVID-19 Vaccine.

A lot of employers are very worried. We see it in our business of selling insurance to other businesses, she said. Woodward was joined in the discussion by former FDA Commissioner Dr. Mark McClellan, who currently serves as the Robert J. Margolis Professor of Business, Medicine, and Policy, and founding director of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy at Duke University. When she asked whether the health policy expert thought employers would have to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations in order to fully reopen the economy, McClellan said he thinks the US can reach herd immunity without mandating vaccines in the short term.

To do the math for what its going to take, weve got close to 30 million Americans infected so far, and probably many more that havent had an official detection of their infection, said McClennan. I think most of the epidemiologic estimates now are maybe at 18-20% of the population thats actually been exposed. Given this horrible surge were in the midst of now, thats probably going to be 25% or more by the end of January.

If we can get another 40-50% of people to take the vaccine throughout our country - not just in certain areas, but broadly - thats a pathway to something like herd immunity, or certainly at least [a situation where] healthcare systems not being overburdened. You can see that happening by the end of the second quarter if things keep on track [] so we can get to a level of herd immunity if we do things right from here.

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McClellan, who is a former Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said he does expect mandatory vaccinations to happen at some point over the coming months, especially in high-risk workplaces. But right now, there are very few places that do it.

At Duke University, weve made [the vaccination] available to all of our frontline health workers, he added. Some have said no, and thats OK for now. Weve got full precautions in place anyway - PPE, social distancing, etc. - and we have [] very good confidence that were containing spread within the workplace under these very modified conditions.

If you want to go to back to a workplace that is less modified, you need to be very confident that youve got high levels of immunity in your worker population to relax some of those measures. Thats probably not going to happen in the next few months because we need to keep these measures in place anyway, and because were still early on with the vaccines.

Both Pfizer and Moderna are very much on track, according to McClennan, toward completing their longer-term clinical studies and gaining full FDA approval (not just emergency approval) by the spring.

By the second half the year, there should be several vaccines that are not just emergency approved, but fully approved, with very good safety, track records, regulatory data and so forth, said McClennan. I think after that point is when youll start seeing more requirements for getting vaccinations when people really want to move forward with reducing some of the distancing measures and getting more groups back together and things like that. But I think its much easier when youre not dealing with emergency use, but youre dealing with normal FDA-approved vaccines.

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Will a COVID-19 vaccine be required to bring workers back to the office? - Insurance Business