Confirmed active cases of COVID-19 nearly doubled across the National Nuclear Security Administration enterprise compared with early December, a spokesperson for agency headquarters in Washington said Friday.
The increase in active cases, the only number the semiautonomous nuclear-weapons agency reports, occurred with the highly contagious but reportedly less severe omicron variant of the virus spreading across the U.S. and the world. There were 530 active cases as of Friday, up from 277 active cases in the first week of December.
There were also two more COVID-19-related fatalities confirmed among the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) national workforce since the first week of December, the spokesperson said: one person at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and another at the Nevada National Security Site.
That brings the total of confirmed COVID-19 fatalities in the nuclear security enterprise to 33 since the disease, first detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 was seen in the U.S. in early 2020.
Also between the first week of December and the first week of January, the Kansas City National Security Campus, the Livermore lab and the Sandia National Laboratories suspended enforcement of their COVID-19 vaccine mandates, joining the vast majority of NNSA sites after December’s decision by a federal judge in Georgia to temporarily block the Joe Biden administration’s vaccine requirement for federal contractors.
“Enforcement of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate has been suspended at the Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC) until such time as the courts have issued final rulings on the vaccine mandate,” a spokesperson for the site, where NNSA manufactures non-nuclear nuclear weapon components, wrote in an email Thursday. “Our employees were informed of this measure on Jan. 4. KCNSC employees, contractors and visitors will continue to follow health and safety protocols established on-site during the pandemic including federal entry requirements at KCNSC, which includes unvaccinated persons to have a negative COVID-19 test within 3 days of entry to the facility.”
At Livermore, enforcement of the mandate “is paused until further notice,” a lab spokesperson said a few days before Christmas. “However, our current COVID-19 safety controls remain in place. We’re currently at 580 total cases, our vaccination rate is approximately 90 percent and about 65 percent of our employees are coming on site each week.”
Sandia on Jan. 5 “paused enforcement of its vaccination mandate, meaning the discipline process for those employees who are unvaccinated, and processing of religious and medical accommodations are on hold,” a spokesperson said Friday. “Despite the pause in enforcement, Sandia continues to encourage the small percentage of employees who remain unvaccinated to become fully vaccinated to create a safer workplace at the Labs and help deter community spread.”
Meanwhile, plenty of employees at NNSA sites were still teleworking as of deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor.
According to site spokespersons, about half of Sandia’s staff was teleworking as of Friday. At the Nevada National Security Site, 44% of staff were working remotely. Typically, the labs have a higher percentage of teleworkers than the production sites. Other NNSA sites did not respond to requests for comment about teleworking.
In Washington meanwhile, “only individuals whose key duties or work activities are required to be performed on-site are working at NNSA headquarters,” an agency spokesperson said Friday.
The Department of Energy and federal government broadly had been aiming to return most employees to their offices full time by January or February. It was unclear on Friday whether, and to what extent, the reportedly milder but more contagious COVID-19 omicron variant might change those plans.
