Total confirmed, active cases of COVID-19 across the National Nuclear Security Administration’s labs, plans and sites fell by more than 70% in February, according to the latest count shared by agency headquarters in Washington.
There were 489 confirmed active cases, a spokesperson at headquarters wrote in an email on Thursday. That’s the lowest level since December, before the extremely contagious omicron variant swept across the U.S., still higher than the 2021 average but dramatically lower than in January, when there were more than 1,000 active cases in every week of the month but one.
There were also no confirmed deaths among National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) civil servants and contractors since the week ended Feb. 3, leaving the total count of fatal cases at the nuclear weapons agency at 37 since the confirmed arrival of the virus in the U.S. in January 2020.
Vaccinations meanwhile appeared to have reached a plateau across the NNSA enterprise. All the NNSA labs, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos and Sandia, reported vaccination rates above 90% this week. That rate changed little in February, by which time, according to data provided by NNSA and its contractors over the past year, vaccination rates at the sites had more or less stabilized.
At the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., vaccination rates were above 80%, according to a spokesperson for the jointly managed weapons-production sites.
The Kansas City National Security Complex does not report vaccination data at the Missouri site, the NNSA’s manufacturing hub for non-nuclear weapon parts, and the Nevada National Security Site has not compiled vaccination data for employees who were vaccinated off site, according to emails from spokespersons for those sites.
Almost every NNSA site, save for Los Alamos and the Savannah River Site, which NNSA uses for some weapons work but does not own, stopped enforcing the federal government’s vaccination mandate for contractors. Typically, enforcement meant firing or placing on unpaid leave anyone who did not get vaccinated.
The government has not given up on the mandate though and argued this week in an appeals court that President Joe Biden does have the authority to restrict federal contracts to business with vaccine mandates.
U.S. Attorneys made that argument this week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, where they are trying to convince a panel of judges to overturn a nationwide injunction against the mandate handed down in December by a U.S. District Court judge in Georgia — “or, at a minimum,” limit it to plaintiffs who actually hold federal contracts, according to a government brief filing this week in the appeal.
Numerous states, including some that host Department of Energy nuclear cleanup sites, and a contractors association filed legal arguments with the appeals court earlier this month urging that the preliminary injunction from U.S. District Judge Stan Baker of Georgia remain in place.
“Directing the inclusion of a COVID-19 safety clause reduces the likelihood that contractor employees will contract a severe and highly transmissible illness and thus enables the government to avoid entering into costly contract modification extensions or paying millions of dollars in unanticipated leave expenses,” government lawyers argue.
The biggest harm plaintiffs claim from the vaccination mandate is some unknown number of employees might quit or be fired rather than take the shot, and this is highly speculative, the government says. United Airlines and Tyson Foods respectively are reporting 99.7% and 96% compliance with their vaccine requirements, according to the brief.
Wayne Barber contributed to this story from Washington.
