There were 71 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among workers for the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup branch as of Dec. 16, down 16 from the prior week, a spokesperson for the office said in a Dec. 28 email.
Also on Dec. 16 date, workers at DOE Office of Environmental Management sites had confirmed 7,416 cases of the illness since the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading across the United States nearly two years ago, the spokesperson said in the email.
Given that the combined federal and contractor workforce for Environmental Management amounts to nearly 28,000, it would appear that roughly a quarter of the employees have tested positive for COVID-19 at some point since early 2020.
Earlier this month, an EM spokesperson said about 91% of the 25,750-member contractor workforce has now been vaccinated and 94% of the direct federal employees at the cleanup office have also been inoculated against COVID-19.
The fate of DOE nuclear workers refusing the vaccine continues to play out in court. Prior to a December court ruling pausing enforcement of a vaccine mandate for federal contractors, those who refused the vaccine were to be fired, unless they secured a medical or religious exemption.
While it is possible the highly-contagious omicron variant of COVID-19 could change this, the DOE recently announced a plan to start moving more of its employees back to on-site locations in January and February. Managers at the Hanford Site in Washington state recently told a Hanford Advisory Board meeting that roughly 60% of its 10,000-person workforce is already on-site at the cleanup property.
