VDH officials expect more workplaces to mandate vaccines

More workplaces will likely require employees to be vaccinated once the Food and Drug Administration provides full licensure of the Pfizer vaccine, expected in September, Dr. Danny Avula, the state’s vaccine coordinator, said Tuesday at a Virginia Department of Health media briefing.

“COVID is not going to go away after this delta variant,” Avula said, “and we are going to see likely future variants, and we are going to need to learn how to live with this disease. Vaccination has to be the bedrock of that along with all those other layers of prevention and mitigation.”

In the past few weeks, Virginia has seen an increase in vaccination requirements, including of state employees, and Avula expects more to come.

“The data has been just overwhelming in favor of both the safety and efficacy of vaccines,” he said, “and that has led a lot of institutions — our federal government, our state government, many local governments and many private sector entities — to require vaccination for their employees. I think when FDA moves to full licensure in the next few weeks, we will see even more of that, and vaccine requirements will be very commonplace throughout the company.”

COVID vaccines are currently under emergency approval in the United States, but the FDA has been working on necessary testing to enact full authorization since last December, when the Pfizer vaccine began being offered. The Moderna vaccine is undergoing a similar approval process, but Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine has not yet been submitted. Businesses, schools and other workplaces will have more leverage to demand their employees get vaccinated after FDA authorization, many experts anticipate, but across the nation and in Virginia, workers are protesting such employer mandates.

Meanwhile, VDH has set up a site where Virginians can download their vaccination records as PDFs to present them at work or at other locations that require vaccination proof. Avula said that the department is working on a platform to provide QR codes for individual vaccination records, although VDH will not purchase or manage the platform, which is expected to be ready in a few weeks.

Dr. Lilian Peake, the state’s epidemiologist, said Virginia saw a 30% increase in infections reported this week compared to the previous week, and 80% of cases tested for variants have been positive for delta. She added that she expects more breakthrough cases with fully vaccinated people while the spread is high, although infections, hospitalizations and deaths are far higher among unvaccinated people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent data, Aug. 2-8, the majority of Virginia localities are experiencing “substantial” to “high” rates of community transmission of the coronavirus.

Dr. Laurie Forlano, the deputy director of the state’s Office of Epidemiology, said that the governor and VDH advise all Virginians ages 2 or older — vaccinated or not — wear masks indoors in public settings in substantial to high transmission areas. However, Gov. Ralph Northam has not mandated masking since his earlier order lapsed this spring, despite the higher spread in the past month.

Avula said he expects to hear more from the CDC’s advisory committee within the next two weeks about third doses of vaccines for vulnerable populations, following their approval in Israel, the United Kingdom and Germany.