With the number of weekly cases still well into triple digits in the old weapons complex, the Department of Energy wants its employees to receive their final vaccination against COVID-19 by Nov. 8, and said it could soon set a deadline for contractor employees to get the shot, according to a memo from the agency’s chief of staff.
At the same time, Safer Federal Workforce Task Force COVID-19 was scheduled to release a guidance on Friday with detailed requirements about vaccinating contractor employees at federal sites, as ordered recently by President Joe Biden. At deadline, the task force had not released the guidance.
As of Thursday, the DOE Office of Environmental Management [EM] had recorded 283 active confirmed cases of COVID-19, or 18 fewer than the prior week, a spokesperson said. Data provided by the Office of Environmental Management show the office’s weekly case count ran from the high-200s to the low-300s in September.
While that’s less dire than August, when cases hit a non-winter peak at 423 before leveling off some, it is still far higher than the better days of mid-May, when cases dropped to 76.
In separate executive orders issued Sept. 9, Biden ordered that all federal employees and contractors receive a COVID-19 vaccination. Biden has said all federal employees, including telecommuters, must be fully vaccinated by Nov. 22.
To become fully vaccinated by the deadline, DOE is now requiring its federal employees to receive their second shot of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson injection, by Nov. 8.
That means there is an Oct. 11 deadline for DOE feds to receive their first shot of the Moderna vaccine and an Oct. 18 date for those planning to get their first dose of Pfizer. The makers of these two vaccines call for differing amounts of time between the first and second dose in order to reap the maximum benefit from the inoculation.
Those electing to go with the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine only have one deadline to remember, Nov. 8.
It typically takes two weeks after the final dose of vaccine for the body to build up maximum protection or immunity against the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
DOE will make exceptions to the vaccine mandate in “limited circumstances in which an employee may be exempt due to a legally required accommodation,” according to the Shah memo.
Vaccine Reluctance Remains With Many Nuke Site Workers
As a union leader, Nick Bumpaous, President of the Central Washington Building Trades Council at the Hanford Site in Washington state, finds himself trying to “thread the needle” in a complex situation, he said Thursday by phone. On the one hand, “vaccinations are a personal choice,” Bumpaous said.
On the other hand, the union recognizes the DOE, as owner of the site, can require certain things such as a drug test or the wearing of steel-toed boots.
It is unfortunate that Hanford workers who might be personally opposed to taking a vaccine will soon face an “ultimatum” of either taking the injection or giving up their livelihood, Bumpaous said.
The Central Washington Building Trades Council at the Hanford Site is an umbrella group that represents about 14 organized labor groups at the former plutonium complex, in both indoor and outdoor locations, Bumpaous said. The Hanford union official said he does not have a good estimate on what percentage of his membership are vaccinated.
Elsewhere, the head of the United Steelworkers Local 1-689 at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio estimates more than half of his 939 union members at the uranium cleanup site have been vaccinated.
The Steelworkers union local has asked DOE and its contractors at the former gaseous diffusion plant in Pike County, Ohio to negotiate the impact of any federal mandate requiring site workers to get vaccinated against the virus, Local 689 President Herman Potter said by phone Monday.
Hopefully, the DOE and other federal agencies will provide exemptions for “religious reasons or pre-existing medical conditions,” Potter told Weapons Complex Monitor.
But unless they plan to retire, people who quit a DOE nuclear site might have trouble finding equally desirable work in their communities, a senior official at one DOE cleanup contractor said Wednesday. “We lose people to DOE,” the industry source said. “We don’t lose people to a bakery or something.”
The United States had at deadline recorded more than 42.6 million cases of COVID-19 with 684,000 deaths as a result according to an online database operated by Johns Hopkins University. About 56% of the U.S. population, more than 182 million people, had been fully vaccinated.
