With FDA approving Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, will your employer make you get a shot?
After the FDA approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Monday, businesses and government agencies across the country announced they would begin mandating vaccination for employees.
The Pentagon ordered its 1.4 million service members to get vaccinated immediately, and President Joe Biden urged employers to require the vaccine for their employees.
But in the Fort Worth area, the movement has been slower.
While businesses in Texas are not prohibited from requiring vaccines, government entities are not allowed under an executive order from Gov. Greg Abbott.
Pfizer-BioNTech’s FDA approval briefly opened a window during which it appeared that Texas public schools, universities and local governments had free rein to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine. That’s because Abbott’s original mandate ban applied specifically to vaccines that had only received emergency use authorization. When the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine passed from “authorized” to “approved,” it appeared to have risen above the ban.
However, Abbott on Wednesday afternoon closed the loophole, when he issued a new order that prohibits government entities from mandating any COVID-19 vaccine.
Even in the brief window of added leeway, Tarrant County leaders stayed the course.
“Most of us are probably just waiting to see if this might change any kind of statewide order,” said Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker on Tuesday. “Here locally, what we’ve tried to do is just encourage people to get vaccinated, make it as available as possible.”
And while the governor’s initial and more recent mandates don’t apply to businesses, a number of North Texas employers said the FDA approval is not a factor. Major Tarrant County employers including Alcon, American Airlines, Bell and Lockheed Martin told the Star-Telegram this week that vaccine guidance for employees hasn’t changed.
“We haven’t made any updates to our policy at this time, so nothing to share, no changes for now,” said American Airlines spokesperson Matt Miller on Wednesday morning. The company does offer an incentive of $50 plus an extra day off in 2022 for staff members who get vaccinated, Miller said in an email.
And at Lockheed Martin, the public-facing COVID-19 guidance hasn’t been updated in more than three weeks, let alone since the recent FDA approval, a company spokesperson confirmed. (That guidance also does not mention COVID-19 vaccination or urge employees to get vaccinated.)
A number of employers who spoke with the Star-Telegram left open the possibility for a future vaccine mandate, hedging their statements by saying that vaccinations are not required “for now” or “at this time.”
Meanwhile, Dallas-based Texas Instruments said all employees and contractors must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 29, according to the Dallas Morning News. Many hospitals, including Baylor Scott & White, Methodist Health, Cook Children’s and Texas Health Resources require employees to be vaccinated.
Vaccine mandates aren’t the only way to increase vaccination rates, said Tarrant County Public Health director Vinny Taneja.
“History has shown, it does work, it has its own place,” Taneja said Tuesday, pointing to back-to-school vaccines that have long been required.
But “there’s always multiple ways to solve a puzzle.”
Taneja said he would prefer to avoid a strict requirement and instead rely on effective outreach and encouragement.
That’s the tact the county and city have taken so far. More than eight months since Tarrant County’s first coronavirus vaccination, 62% of all residents aged 12 and older have received at least one vaccine dose, according to county data.
A mandate “hasn’t really been necessary yet. I think we’re just focused on availability and access right now,” Parker said.
This story was originally published August 26, 2021 at 5:20 AM.
