From CVS to Chevron, FDA decision triggers vaccine mandates

From Walt Disney World and Chevron to CVS and a Michigan university, a flurry of private and public employers are requiring workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19 after the federal government gave full approval to the Pfizer shot. And the number is certain to grow much higher.

For the past eight months, coronavirus shots were dispensed in the U.S. under emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration. Some workers and unions objected to getting the vaccine — and some employers were reluctant to require it — because it had yet to receive FDA full approval. That happened on Monday.

“The FDA decision takes that off the table," said Devjani Mishra, a New York-based attorney with the firm Littler Mendelson, which specializes in workplace matters. She and others in the worlds of business, law and health predicted more companies will mandate vaccines for their workforces.

Shortly after the FDA acted, Walt Disney World reached a deal with its unions to require all workers at its theme park in Orlando, Florida, to be vaccinated.

Drugstore chain CVS said employees who have contact with customers will have to be inoculated. Oil giant Chevron Corp. said it will require some of its workers — such as those who travel internationally, live abroad or work on its offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico — to get their COVID-19 shots.

“We pushed `go' when the FDA made that decision,” said Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, president of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, which announced on Monday that its 800 faculty members, 1,500 staff members and 18,000 students will have to be vaccinated. Before that, only students living on campus had to get the shot.

She said the university could have legally mandated vaccines before the FDA decision but waited for it because...