U.S Federal Appeals Court Halts Biden’s Vaccine Rule for Now

On Saturday, a U.S federal appeals court issued an order to freeze a mandate requiring all workers to get vaccinated or get tested on a weekly basis. The Biden-issued vaccine mandate focuses on increasing overall vaccination rates and curbing the growing number of infections.

However, the court has stated issues with the rule and says it must be reviewed. The ruling was passed from the U.S Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit as republicans filed complaints against the mandate. Seema Nanda, Solicitor of Labor said, “The Occupational Safety and Health Act explicitly gives OSHA the authority to act quickly in an emergency where the agency finds that workers are subjected to a grave danger and a new standard is necessary to protect them. We are fully prepared to defend this standard in court.”

The stay was issued two days after the Biden Administration released the vaccine rule and received criticism from republican-led states. Under the vaccine mandate, over 84.2 million workers will be required to get the vaccine by January. New reports show that an average of 1,100 American citizens die from Covid every day, majority of whom are not vaccinated. The deadly virus has killed over 750,000 people in the United States so far.

©Photo: Bloomberg