The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, which as of March 31 has confirmed 4,593 cases of COVID-19 among its federal and contractor workforce since the pandemic began, has no plans to order employees to take the vaccine.
An Environmental Management (EM) spokesperson provided the cumulative figure and addressed the office’s approach to vaccinations by email this week in response to an inquiry from Weapons Complex Monitor.
During a week in which at least a couple of DOE’s nuclear cleanup sites, Hanford in Washington state and Portsmouth in Ohio, were planning vaccination efforts, the agency continues to encourage but not require workers to take the shots.
When asked if the Office of Environmental Management would eventually require staff vaccinations if education and persuasion should fail to convince large chunks of the workforce to take the shot, the spokesperson replied the cleanup office will follow government policy.
“DOE continues to follow CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and Biden Administration guidelines for COVID, including having employees wear masks/face coverings,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue to follow federal government policy related to vaccinations and continue to focus on workplace safety measures.”
The EM spokesperson said the $7-billion-plus cleanup organization is encouraging its workers to take the vaccine “when it’s available in their local community and have taken steps to facilitate vaccination at many of our sites.”
“I think we like that approach rather than mandating it,” John Knauff, president of United Steelworkers Local 1-689, said by telephone Thursday. The steelworkers local represents hundreds of workers, mostly for cleanup contractor Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth. Knauff believes much of his membership would resent being ordered to take the vaccine.
The union official is pleased EM is giving workers four hours leave to get vaccinated and would have liked to see the federal agency and its contractors do more — such as offering gift cards to workers who provide proof of vaccination.
Knauff suspects a quarter of the workforce at Portsmouth has received at least one vaccine injection so far. That number should rise following an on-site vaccination clinic being held at the DOE cleanup site April 14 by the Pike County Health Department.
“This is strictly a voluntary opportunity for all personnel working at the site,” DOE staff and employees of all contractors and subcontractors, to receive a shot of the Pfizer vaccine, according to a notice advertising the event at Portsmouth.
Meanwhile, appointments to receive Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine are available from the occupational medicine contractor at the Hanford Site in Washington state, where at deadline, nine workers had since Saturday tested positive for the disease.
The most recent positive test at Hanford was reported Thursday, according to a DOE website run by Hanford’s Leidos-led landlord contractor. Only two such confirmed cases were reported on the same website for the week ended April 2.
A Monday memo posted online for Hanford workers said HPMC Occupational Medical Services has appointments available for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. “The vaccine is being offered to eligible Hanford workers who have not already received the first dose from another source,” according to the notice.
If any extra vaccine is available, HPMC will call those on standby to report to the clinic within 30 minutes, according to the memo. Hanford Site employees were urged to share the news with their non-online coworkers.
Until lately, on-site vaccinations at Hanford have been limited largely to fire fighters and other first-responders. But this could change rapidly as vaccine makers are reportedly ramping up production and the administration of President Joe Biden and most states are revising their criteria to make most adults eligible to receive the coronavirus vaccine by the end of the month.
As of Wednesday, the Biden administration said during a COVID press briefing that more than 108 million Americans have gotten at least their first shot.
As of Friday morning, a contractor-run DOE website for the Savannah River Site in South Carolina reported there were 23 workers in quarantine with COVID-19, which is down from the prior week’s total of 25.
There are 105 confirmed active COVID cases in the EM complex this week, the EM spokesperson said. That is down significantly from 132 last week and 137 the week before.
As of Friday morning, there have been about 31 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States and 560,000 deaths as a result, according to an online tracker run by Johns Hopkins University.
