(Image: City of Seattle)
Employees of the City of Seattle must join state employees, and employees at private health care and long-term care facilities and get vaccinated against COVID-19. Mayor Jenny Durkan joined Gov. Jay Inslee, and County Executive Dow Constantine to announce the new vaccination requirements Monday.
City and state government employees and the workers under the new requirements have until October 18th to be fully vaccinated.
The mandates join renewed masking requirements as areas across the state including populous King County return to levels of “substantial transmission” of the virus and more virulent variants.
In Seattle, the directive applies to city workers “in executive departments, regardless of whether or not they are reporting to the office, unless they have a sincerely held religious or medical exemption.”
Meanwhile, with public schools across the state preparing to start a new year with in-person learning, the directives do not apply to K-12 teachers or higher education employees. The state’s legislative branch and other statewide elected officials are also not subject to the mandate.
The emergency orders cover thousands of workers, the Seattle Times reports.
Washington has more than 68,000 state government employees, excluding the higher education system. The vaccines will be required regardless of whether employees have returned to in-person worksites to or are still working from home.
King County has about 13,500 executive branch employees who would be subject to the rule, a spokesperson for Constantine said. The city of Seattle has about 12,000 employees potentially subject to the mandate.
The city’s mandate includes the Seattle Police Department and the Seattle Fire Department. A spokesperson said it does not include the legislative department, Seattle Municipal Court, or the City Attorney’s office.
Across the state, most agencies are part of the mandate including the Washington State Patrol and, at the county level, the King County Sheriff.
UPDATE: “We’re mirroring the state policy (we’ve been delayed in getting our release up) but the 13,500 employees covered by today’s announcement include the Executive branch, which includes Metro and the Sheriff, as well as the Assessor and KC Elections,” a county spokesperson tells CHS.
The governor also ordered vaccination requirements for private-sector healthcare workers and employees in long-term care facilities.
Some of the largest employers in the area area also putting their own vaccination requirements into place. Microsoft announced last week it will delay reopening its offices and will “require proof of vaccination for all employees, vendors, and any guests entering Microsoft buildings in the U.S.”
At Seattle City Hall, more than 60% of employees have returned to their work sites “with additional employees expected to continue to return as the City of Seattle safely reopens its public counters, community centers, and libraries in the coming weeks.” The city says it will allow employees “who can continue to work remotely” to work on site or telework until at least mid-October.
In the announcement, Durkan’s office pointed out the city’s vaccination totals with 82.5% of residents 12 and older have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
“City and countywide data show that vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness, hospitalizations, and deaths even as the state has lifted most capacity restrictions at businesses,” the announcement reads. “There has not been a reported death of a Seattle resident since July 11, and Seattle has averaged some of its lowest hospitalizations over the last four waves.”
In Seattle and King County, as with the renewed spread of the virus across the country, officials say recent totals show 81% of cases and 89% of COVID-related hospitalizations have been among the not fully vaccinated. Among COVID-related deaths in King County in July, 91% of the victims were not fully vaccinated.
PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
Laughing at all the eastern WA towns’ cops being forced to do this. Will help a big chunk.
You love to see it
Many Americans are selfishly refusing to get vaccinated, often for political reasons, and this puts not only themselves but everyone else at risk. So, the more mandates, the better. These do not absolutely require holdouts to be vaccinated, so they do not impinge on anyone’s “freedom.” But they do mean that, if someone refuses vaccination, there will be consequences, such as not being able to go to restaurants or sporting events.
Bingo. One person’s freedoms end precisely where another person’s freedoms begin and no further. AKA the adage “your freedom to swing your fists ends at my nose”.
Refusing a safe vaccine during a global pandemic absolutely endangers other people’s freedom to be healthy.
Living in a society necessitates some trade offs from “absolute freedom”, which was recognized by our founding fathers. If someone wants to exercise their “free dumb” to refuse the vaccine, they are free to leave society. The rest of us will carry on.
There is no such thing as “freedom to be healthy”
If that were a thing cars would be banned on the street I live on.
Sure there is.
Problem is, society has not (yet) come to terms with the fact that cars are inherent danger to our health, despite all the evidence that they are.
Society has determined that COVID is an inherent danger to our health. That’s why courts have consistently upheld vaccine and mask mandates and why private entities are able to require employees and customers to have one or both.
The whole premise of the EPA, FDA and other government oversight agencies is based on our right to be healthy.