The Biden administration will end most of the last remaining federal COVID-19 vaccine requirements next week when the national public health emergency for the coronavirus ends, the White House said Monday.
Vaccine requirements for federal workers and federal contractors, as well as foreign air travelers to the U.S., will end May 11. The government is also beginning the process of lifting shot requirements for Head Start educators, healthcare workers, and noncitizens at U.S. land borders.
The requirements are among the last vestiges of some of the more coercive measures taken by the federal government to promote vaccination as the deadly virus raged, and their end marks the latest display of how President Joe Biden’s administration is moving to treat COVID-19 as a routine, endemic illness.
“While I believe that these vaccine mandates had a tremendous beneficial impact, we are now at a point where we think that it makes a lot of sense to pull these requirements down,” White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told The Associated Press on Monday.
Deeply polarizing at the time and the subject of numerous legal challenges — many of which were successful — the vaccination requirements were imposed by Biden in successive waves in late 2022 as the nation’s vaccination rate plateaued even amid the emergence of new, more transmissible variants of COVID-19.
More than 100 million people at one time were covered by Biden’s sweeping mandates, which he announced on Sept. 9, 2021, as the delta variant of the virus was sickening more people than at any time up to that point in the pandemic. Biden had ruled out such requirements before taking office that January, but came to embrace them to change the behavior of what he viewed to be a stubborn slice of the public that refused to be inoculated, saying they jeopardized the lives of others and the nation’s economic recovery.
“We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us,” Biden said at the time. The unvaccinated minority “can cause a lot of damage, and they are.”
Federal courts and Congress have already rolled back Biden’s vaccine requirements for large employers and military servicemembers.
Mandates remain for many employees of the National Institutes of Health, Indian Health Service and Department of Veterans Affairs — which implemented their own requirements for healthcare staff and others independent of the White House — will remain while those agencies review their own requirements, the administration said.
Over 1.13 million people in the U.S. have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began more than three years ago, including 1,052 people in the week ending April 26, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That was the lowest weekly death toll from the virus since March 2020.
“COVID continues to be a problem,” Jha said. “But our healthcare system or public health resources are far more able to respond to the threat that COVID poses to our country and do so in a way that does not cause problems with access to care for Americans.”
He added, “Some of these emergency powers are just not necessary in the same way anymore.”
More than 270 million people in the U.S., or just over 81% of the population, have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the CDC.
For more than a year, U.S. health officials have been eyeing a long-term response to COVID-19 that is more similar to the approach to influenza, with updated shots yearly targeted at the latest strains of the virus — particularly for the most vulnerable. But fewer than 56 million people in the U.S., or 17% of the population, have received a dose of the updated bivalent boosters that became available in September 2022 and provide better protection against the omicron variants that remain in circulation.
“We don’t have a national mandate for flu vaccines in the same way, and yet we see pretty good uptake of flu vaccines,” Jha said. “The goal here really is to continue to encourage people to get vaccinated, but I don’t think mandates are going to be necessary for getting Americans vaccinated against COVID in the future.”
While federal mandates are ending, Jha predicted that some employers, especially medical facilities, may decide to maintain their COVID-19 vaccination requirements. He noted that the hospital where he practices has had a flu vaccine requirement for employees for 20 years.
Jha dismissed concerns that the ending of the international traveler vaccination requirement would increase the risk of a new variant from overseas entering the U.S. Biden has already rolled back virus testing requirements for both American citizens and foreign travelers to the U.S.
Jha said the U.S. was already protected by a traveler genomic surveillance program, which, for instance, tests for different virus strains in aircraft wastewater.
“We think that we are much more able to identify if a new variant shows up in the United States and respond effectively,” he said. “And I think that’s what makes the need for a vaccine mandate for travelers less necessary right now.”
Chinese authorities were preparing Sunday to release a man who disappeared three years ago after publicizing videos of overcrowded hospitals and bodies during the COVID-19 outbreak, a relative and another person familiar with his case said.
Fang Bin and other members of the public who were dubbed citizen journalists posted details of the pandemic in early 2020 on the internet and social media, embarrassing Chinese officials who faced criticism for failing to control the outbreak. The last video Fang, a seller of traditional Chinese clothing, posted on Twitter was of a piece of paper reading, “All citizens resist, hand power back to the people.”
Fang’s case is part of Beijing’s crackdown on criticism of China’s early handling of the pandemic, as the ruling Communist Party seeks to control the narrative of the country.
He was scheduled to be released Sunday, according to two people who did not want to be identified for fear of government retribution. One of them said Fang was sentenced to three years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a vague charge traditionally used against political dissidents.
The Associated Press could not independently confirm his release and could not confirm the details with the authorities.
Two offices of Wuhan’s public security bureau did not provide a phone number of their information office or answer any questions. Phone calls to a court that reportedly sentenced Fang rang unanswered on Sunday afternoon. A woman from another court that had reportedly handled Fang’s appeal said she was not authorized to answer questions.
In early 2020, the initial COVID outbreak devastated the city of Wuhan, home to 11 million residents, in central China’s Hubei province. Under a 76-day lockdown, its streets were deserted for months, apart from ambulances and security personnel.
At that time, a small number of citizen journalists tried to tell their stories and those of others with smart phones and social media accounts, defying the Communist Party’s tightly policed monopoly on information. Although their movement was small, the scale was unprecedented in any previous major disease outbreak or disaster in China.
But the information they posed soon got them into trouble. Fang and another citizen journalist, Chen Qiushi, disappeared in February.
Chen in September 2021 resurfaced on his friend’s live video feed on YouTube, saying he had suffered from depression. But he did not provide details about his disappearance.
Another citizen journalist, Zhang Zhan, who also had reported on the early stage of the outbreak, was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of picking fights and provoking trouble in December 2020. About eight months later, her lawyer said she was in ill health after staging a long-running hunger strike.
Japan will lift most of its coronavirus border controls, including a requirement that entrants show proof of three vaccinations or a pre-departure negative test, beginning Saturday as the country’s Golden Week holiday season begins and a large influx of foreign tourists is expected.
All entrants with symptoms will still be required to take COVID-19 tests after arriving until May 8, and those who test positive will be placed in designated quarantine facilities, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters. After May 9, testing of those with symptoms will be voluntary.
Japan will also drop a special measure subjecting visitors from mainland China to random testing upon arrival that was implemented in late December when infections surged there, he said.
The government had originally planned to implement the changes on May 8, when it will downgrade the official status of the coronavirus to a common infectious disease like seasonal influenza, but decided to speed them up for the holiday season beginning Saturday.
Japan’s government dropped its requests for mask wearing in March, leaving it up to each person’s discretion. Most Japanese continue to wear them, although they are only recommended now in crowded trains, hospitals and other public spaces, and near elderly and other vulnerable people.
COVID-19 is currently categorized as a Class 2 disease along with SARS and tuberculosis, which allows restrictions on the movements of patients and their close contacts and the issuing of emergency measures by the government. Downgrading it to Class 5 will scrap those rules.
Total Doses Distributed = 979,617,855. Total Doses Administered = 675,442,636. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 270,047,396. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 230,533,196.
The first years of the pandemic saw a huge decline in high school students having sex, according to a government survey.
Teen sex was already becoming less and less common before COVID-19.
About three decades ago, more than half of teens said they’d had sex, according to a large government survey conducted every two years. By 2019, the share was 38%. In 2021, 30% of teens said they had ever had sex. That drop was the sharpest ever recorded by the survey.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday released reports analyzing the latest findings from the survey that looks into risky youth behaviors, including smoking, drinking, having sex and carrying guns.
More than 17,000 students at 152 public and private high schools responded to the 2021 survey. Participation was voluntary and required parental permission, but responses were anonymous.
The CDC also noted declines in students who said they were currently having sex or who’d had at least four sex partners.
The declines clearly had a lot to do with the pandemic that kept kids isolated at home for long stretches and, often, under extended adult supervision, experts said.
Health officials generally like to see trends that result in fewer teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, but the decline in teen sex coincided with increased reports of social isolation and poor mental health.
“I think these together paint a picture of high school students building fewer strong interpersonal connections that can be protective of good mental health,” said Laura Lindberg, a Rutgers University researcher who studies adolescent sexual behavior.
“This is an opportunity to say maybe teens are having too little sex,” said Lindberg, who was not involved in the reports.
The CDC’s Kathleen Ethier said the decline may be a good thing if it reflects more young people making healthy decisions to delay sex and reduce their number of partners.
“But what concerns me is this is potentially a reflection of social isolation,” said Ethier, director of the CDC’s division of adolescent and school health.
The 2023 survey, which will show if the decline was temporary, is currently underway.
Another finding: The proportion of high school kids who identify as heterosexual dropped to about 75%, down from about 89% as recently as 2015. Meanwhile, the share who identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual rose to 15%, up from 8% in 2015, when the survey began asking about sexual orientation.
There were also increases in the proportion who said “other” or that they were questioning or uncertain, the CDC found. The changes may be at least partly related to social changes that have reduced the stigma about identifying as not heterosexual, Lindberg said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Total Doses Distributed = 978,124,175. Total Doses Administered = 675,024,615. Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses = 269,971,358. Number of People Fully Vaccinated = 230,485,008.
