Some vaccine mandates may leave US vulnerable at home and abroad as omicron numbers surge

COVID-19 vaccine mandates have put some vital U.S health and safety institutions in a tough spot after cutting personnel who didn’t comply. 

Overlapping federal mandates for military personnel, state mandates for health care workers, and other private mandates have created an increasingly difficult situation in the face of the omicron variant as numbers continue to surge in some states due to the much greater transmissibility of the variant. 

President Biden in August issued a federal vaccine mandate that required military personnel in each branch to receive a vaccination, and later issued one for any business with over 100 employees. The military has insisted that the number of separations do not present a problem, but other sectors, such as public health and safety, have struggled to handle the loss of personnel. 

Each military branch had a different deadline, but by Dec. 15 each deadline had passed and the services began to separate personnel who refused to comply or did not earn an exemption on religious or medical grounds.