In a short six-minute address to the nation Thursday, President Biden said: The mandate for a COVID-19 vaccine to the private sector will go into effect “soon” to treat the “unacceptably large number” of people who do not want to be vaccinated.
But he did not receive any questions from reporters, for the second day in a row after a keynote speech, amid nationwide concerns about high inflation and a supply chain crisis that left store shelves empty and threats of holiday gift deliveries where most raw materials are priced. go up.
Speaking about COVID-19, Biden said, “We’re making progress. Nationwide, daily cases are down 47 percent and hospital admissions are down 38 percent in the past six weeks.”
But he said “we are in a very critical period as we work to turn the corner on COVID-19” and that we “need to do more to vaccinate the 66 million unvaccinated people in America.”
“The Department of Labor will soon issue an emergency law for companies with 100 or more employees to implement vaccination requirements,” Biden said.
Biden announced last month that most federal employees should be vaccinated and companies with 100 or more employees should order regular injections or tests. The Department of Labor submitted a draft regulation to the White House Budget Office this week.
The Republican National Committee said last month that it would file a lawsuit to stop Biden’s approval of a vaccine for the private sector, and Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed an executive order on Monday alleging federal authorization for US state-owned companies. sway.
Biden opposed the response in his comments Thursday, stressing that “vaccination requirements should not be another issue that divides us. That’s why we continue to fight misinformation.”
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 78.5 percent of American adults have had at least one injection of COVID-19.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was unclear when the Private Sector Act would go into effect.
“We don’t comment on this practice for too long to comment on the timeline for how long that will take because we want this process to happen,” she said.
Biden hosted another public event with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Thursday afternoon, but he also did not talk there about inflation-fueled US economic problems and the supply chain crisis, though he did talk about the port backlog on Wednesday,
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein came under fire Thursday for pointing to waning consumer purchasing power and supply shortages. First-order problems compared to potentially more serious problems such as high unemployment rates.
