Clinical Update: Vaccine Mandates & Vaccine Resistant Variants

This week's Clinical Update released by Alaska DHSS has some interesting information in it—not that it doesn't typically, it's just that this week it has a little something extra that's certain to cause a high degree of mouth-frothing amongst social media scientists and constitutional scholars.

According to a section titled "Major companies mandating COVID-19 vaccination," Alaska DHSS notes that some of the largest employers in the United States have recently announced SARS-CoV-2 vaccination mandates for all or some of their employees amid a surge of COVID-19 cases.

Walmart, Disney, Google, Tyson Foods, Delta and United Airlines, and Goldman Sachs are just some of the companies requiring that at least some of their employees be vaccinated, either as a condition of employment or to return to corporate office buildings.

According to the Clinical Update, the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has issued guidance generally permitting employers to institute vaccination mandates in the workplace as long as reasonable accommodations are offered to those with religious beliefs, disabilities, or other conditions that might prohibit vaccination.

On July 6, the US Department of Justice published a memorandum explaining that Section 564 of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, which authorizes the US FDA to issue emergency use authorization (EUA), does not prohibit public and private entities such as businesses and schools from imposing SARS-CoV-2 vaccine requirements. In essence, the regulation permits employers to implement policies requiring vaccination as a condition of employment even when the vaccine is being used under a EUA.

However, the fun doesn't stop there as researchers predict a high likelihood of the emergence of a vaccine-resistant variant of the coronavirus!

In separate reports, researchers from Austria and the UK warn of the near inevitability of the emergence of vaccine-resistant variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The reports claim that the highest risk of vaccine-resistant strain establishment occurs when a large proportion of the population is vaccinated and viral transmission is high, underlining the importance of controlling transmission through public health interventions while continuing vaccination campaigns.

The Austrian report says, “the emergence of a partially or fully vaccine-resistant strain and its eventual establishment appears inevitable.”

Good times, good times.

You can read Alaska DHSS's Clinical Summary here and remember—