President Joe Biden‘s administration has announced that nearly all 3.5 million federal government employees have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, highlighting the effectiveness of Biden’s mandate that all federal workers get inoculated against the coronavirus.
“Already 95% of USG employees are in compliance with the President’s vax requirement. There are no disruptions related to the requirement; we’ll avoid Covid-related disruptions through vaccinations. Today isn’t a cliff and we’ll be working with employees,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Kevin Munoz tweeted on Monday.
Ninety-nine percent of employees at FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration and 98% of Customs and Border Protection and 93% of Transportation Security Administration employees have followed the vaccine and exemption rules.
But this good news is somewhat overshadowed by the grim reality of the ongoing pandemic.
On Saturday, updated data from Johns Hopkins University indicated that more American lives were lost to Covid-19 in 2021 than in 2020, and that figure is expected to increase during the busy holiday travel season.
Of the 771,118 total deaths so far, 385,775 occurred in 2021, 427 more than last year. This is in spite of three available vaccines and 80 percent of the country has had at least one shot. Roughly 60 percent of the population has been fully immunized against the virus, according to Johns Hopkins.
