| On Thursday, the Biden administration announced that vaccine rules will take effect Jan. 4 for companies with 100 or more employees, certain health care workers and federal contractors.
The rules — which will impact 84 million employers at large employers and 17 million health care workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid — call for employees in those groups to receive the necessary shots to be fully vaccinated by Jan. 4.
The rules stipulate that employees that fall into those groups will need to have received the necessary shots to be fully vaccinated, either two doses of Pfizer or Moderna’s vaccine or one dose of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, by Jan. 4.
“Higher vaccination rates protect our workers, reduce hospitalizations and deaths. It’s good for workers and importantly, this is good for the economy,” a senior administration official said.
The announcement of the Jan. 4 deadline means a previous vaccine mandate for federal contractors — previously scheduled to take effect Dec. 8 — will be pushed back.
Some business groups have been calling for flexibility with the deadline, especially because of how vaccine mandates could further impact ongoing supply chain issues. However, officials say the new date was chosen to make it easier for companies and workers to comply.
“In order to make it easier for businesses to comply and workers to comply, we’ve decided to align the contractor deadline with the deadlines for both CMS and OSHA,” the official said.
Thursday's announcement also clarifies that the rules will preempt state or local laws meant to ban vaccine mandates. Both Texas and Florida have attempted to pass their own laws to restrict vaccine mandates.
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