President Biden on Thursday announced a host of new plans to rein in COVID-19’s runaway transmission in the U.S., including sweeping vaccine mandates that will affect 100 million American workers, nearly two-thirds of the country’s workforce. Learn more:
Biden said the federal government will require staff at federally funded Head Start programs and schools to be vaccinated. He’s also calling on all states to mandate vaccines for teachers.
“What I saw today was the federal government trying to use its powers to create greater safety in the American population,” said Ashish K. Jha, MD, Dean of the school of public health at Brown University, in a call with reporters after the speech.“I will pursue every legal option available to the state of Georgia to stop this blatantly unlawful overreach by the Biden Administration,” said Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who is a Republican, in a Tweet.
Biden pledged to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of at-home tests, which have been selling out across the nation as theHe also announced plans to expand access to COVID-19 testing, including offering testing for free at thousands of pharmacies nationwide and getting major retailers to sell at-home COVID-19 tests at cost.
“Our country has failed to deploy tests in a way that can really bring this pandemic under control,” Jha said. “There are plenty of reasons, data, experience to indicate that if these were widely available, it would make a dramatic difference in reducing infection numbers across our country.".
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