Tag Archives: U.S. employers

U.S. employers could mandate a COVID-19 vaccine, but are unlikely to do so: experts

By Tina Bellon

(Reuters) – Private U.S. companies have the right under the law to require employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19, but are unlikely to do so because of the risks of legal and cultural backlash, experts said.

Companies are still in the early stages of navigating access and distribution of vaccines against the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, but inoculation is considered the key to safely resume operations at crowded warehouses, factory lines and on sales floors.

“Companies have every good reason to get all of their employees vaccinated and also have an obligation to keep all employees and customers safe,” said Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University.

Gostin and five other health law experts said private companies in the United States have broad liberties to set health and safety standards, which would allow them to mandate vaccinations as a condition of employment with some exceptions.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in May said employers were allowed to compel employees to get a coronavirus test before allowing them to return to work, a decision that some experts said might be extended to vaccine mandates.

But Robert Field, a law and public health professor at Drexel University, said companies considering mandates should wait for vaccines to undergo a full-fledged regulatory review process.

“Employers are on shakier grounds because of the emergency use authorization,” Field said, adding there was no precedent for vaccine mandates during that phase.

U.S. courts that have ruled on lawsuits by healthcare workers opposing employer-mandated flu vaccines have largely sided with hospitals as long as they provided reasonable exemption policies, court records showed.

REGULATORY PATCHWORK

In Europe, companies face a patchwork of national vaccine regulation, with some countries mandating childhood vaccines, but European employers overall are unlikely to be able to mandate vaccination for staff, experts said.

In France, which in 2018 began mandating some childhood vaccines, some vaccinations are obligatory for professionals in the social and healthcare industry. President Emmanuel Macron has said a coronavirus vaccine will not be mandatory.

In Germany currently, only measles vaccines are mandatory for some employees and companies have no sufficient legal basis to order COVID-19 vaccination, said Pauline Moritz, a Frankfurt-based employment law attorney.

And in the UK, the government has no legal power to compel vaccination and employers attempting to mandate vaccines would likely confront human rights concerns, employment lawyers at Morgan Lewis wrote in a blog post.

U.S. agencies to date have not weighed in on COVID-19 vaccine mandates, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in the past has said employers have the right to mandate vaccines.

OSHA referred a request for comment to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which did not respond.

VACCINE MANDATES UNLIKELY

U.S. companies so far are shying away from discussing vaccine mandates, ahead of formal approval for a vaccine by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Ford Motor Co, which has ordered a dozen ultra-cold freezers to distribute vaccines to employees, said they would be made available on a voluntary basis.

A spokeswoman for Kellogg Co said the company was working with a medical expert and industry trade associations to make vaccines available to employees on a voluntary basis, in compliance with local and regional regulations.

“Companies could theoretically issue a mandate, but in the current political climate it is very unlikely they will do so,” said Peter Meyers, a law professor at George Washington University Law School. “Americans tend to shy away from mandates.”

Surveys have shown many Americans have safety concerns about a COVID vaccine, with nearly half of the 10,000 respondents polled in a September Pew research survey saying they would definitely or probably not get the vaccine.

Some experts said any vaccine mandates would prompt litigation. Cases alleging infringement on religious freedom could make it to a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court.

Vaccine mandates are common in the U.S. healthcare industry, where many hospitals require staff to take annual flu shots and all U.S. states mandate vaccines for school children.

Employees and parents can object to vaccines largely on two grounds: medical conditions that contraindicate vaccination or – depending on the U.S. state – religious or personal believes.

Some union contracts with individual employers, particularly in the healthcare industry, also prevent mandatory vaccines.

If an employee rejects vaccination on religious grounds, an employer has to make a reasonable effort to accommodate the worker, such as offering a transfer to a different department with fewer personal interactions or mandating masks, said Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, a law professor at UC Hastings.

So far two companies, Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc, have asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for emergency use authorization of their vaccine candidates.

The chief adviser of the U.S. government’s COVID-19 vaccine program said on Tuesday that 20 million people could be vaccinated by the end of 2020, and that by the middle of 2021 most Americans will have access to highly effective vaccines.

(Reporting by Tina Bellon in New York; Additional reporting by Richa Naidu in Chicago; Editing by Joe White and Nick Zieminski)

U.S. employers wary of coronavirus ‘immunity’ tests as they move to reopen

By Caroline Humer and Timothy Aeppel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. employers have cooled to the idea of testing workers for possible immunity to the coronavirus as they prepare to reopen factories and other workplaces.

Blood tests that check for antibodies to the new coronavirus have been touted by governments and some disease experts as a way to identify people who are less likely to fall ill or infect others. Italian automaker Ferrari NV has made antibody testing central to its “Back on Track” project to restarting factories.

But many U.S. companies are not planning to use them, relying on face masks, temperature checks, social distancing, and diagnostic tests for those with symptoms, employers and healthcare experts told Reuters.

Mercer, which advises companies on healthcare benefits, has surveyed more than 700 U.S. employers in industries from high tech to retail to energy, and found 8% of companies said they would include antibody tests in plans to screen employees.

Interest in antibody tests from employers has fallen in recent weeks as reports have suggested that it is too early to conclude that antibodies to the new coronavirus translate into immunity. The American Medical Association cautioned on Thursday that these tests do not determine an individual’s immunity.

“Many employers … are realizing that antibody testing isn’t going to be a silver bullet and really isn’t going to bring them any value,” said David Zieg, a lead consultant on clinical services at Mercer.

Other employers worry about their liability if they administer and interpret such tests, or are concerned about test costs and availability. Some were spooked by a flood of tests that hit the market before being reviewed by regulators for accuracy, which has contributed to confusion over results.

A new antibody test from Roche Holding AG that has shown itself to be highly accurate could potentially help answer questions about antibodies and immunity and change corporate demand, but it has not done so yet, consultants and companies said.

Governments, however, are interested in antibody tests, particularly if they are accurate. Britain on Thursday said it is in talks with Roche over buying tests that it could use to create a certificate of immunity once there is a better understanding of the science.

Collective Health, a healthcare technology company that has built back-to-work strategies for large companies, is advising employers to use diagnostic tests, not antibody tests.

“There has been a proliferation of low-quality antibody tests and the antibody tests themselves don’t necessarily answer any questions about immunity,” said Rajaie Batniji, Collective Health’s chief health officer.

GETTING BACK TO WORK

When General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV reopen production next week, they intend to offer diagnostic tests to workers, not antibody tests. Officials at the Detroit carmakers said it was because it was not clear what the antibody tests show.

Amazon.com Inc’s on-site testing plan, now in development, does not include antibody testing. Those views were echoed in interviews with a handful of smaller U.S. manufacturers.

Shawn Kitchell, chief executive of Florida-based plastics manufacturer Madico Inc, is not planning to use antibody tests for his 250 employees. He questions their costs, accuracy, and the fact that the timing of tests can lead to different results, requiring multiple tries.

“How frequently would we need to test to make it safer for our co-workers?” Kitchell said.

Employers are also wary of an unregulated U.S. market for antibody tests. Since March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has allowed more than 200 tests into the market without regulatory review to make them available quickly, opening the door to questionable vendors and inaccurate tests, Reuters found.

Last week, the agency set a deadline for all vendors to prove to the FDA that their tests work or remove them from the market. It has also authorized two highly-accurate tests from Roche and Abbott Laboratories, which are able to supply millions of tests per week.

One of the biggest U.S. testing providers, LabCorp, on Thursday said it was rolling out a program to make diagnostic tests and antibody tests available at workplaces.

LabCorp’s chief medical officer, Brian Caveney, said interest in antibody testing is coming from companies in coronavirus hotspots, such as New York, while other areas with fewer COVID-19 cases see diagnostic testing as more important.

As the new FDA process shows which tests work and which don’t, that will help advance research on how many people recovering from COVID-19 develop antibodies and at what level, and show if they are truly immune to infection, said Howard Koh, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“Until we go through those steps, I don’t see how we can translate this for the typical person who wants to go back to work,” Koh said.

(This story has been refiled to change spelling to Zieg from Zeig in paragraph six)

(Reporting by Caroline Humer, Timothy Aeppel and Krystal Hu in New York and Ben Klayman in Detroit; editing by Michele Gershberg and Nick Zieminski)