Democratic President Joe Biden is set to announce new COVID-19 measures established by his administration that will involve various efforts such as testing, mandates, and school guidelines for both vaccinated and unvaccinated folks. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Wednesday that there will be new measures specifically for unvaccinated people.
"There are six steps the president's announcing, there will be new components," Psaki explained to reporters on Wednesday, as reported by the Epoch Times. "Some of that will be related to access to testing, some will be related to mandates, some will be related to how we ensure kids will be protected in schools."
When asked by a reporter how the "new components" will affect Americans all over the U.S., Psaki said, "it depends on if you're vaccinated or not."
She did not elaborate on the mandates that people unvaccinated for COVID-19 may face when President Biden announces his new set of rules. Just a day prior, she told reporters on Air Force One that the federal government does not have the authority to force people unvaccinated for COVID-19 to get the jab.
"There will be new components that sure, will of course impact people across the country, but we're also all working together to get the virus under control, to return to our normal lives," Psaki said on Wednesday, during which the president was scheduled to hold a meeting with his COVID-19 advisers. Just last week, the president admitted that his administration continues to find ways to ensure the safety of children going back to school this Fall, The Hill reported.
"We must continue to vaccinate all of those who are eligible to protect our younger children from disease," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a press briefing on September 2. "Communities with high vaccination coverage are seeing lower pediatric cases and hospitalizations."
President Biden previously implemented a vaccine mandate for all federal employees and contractors. Under the mandate, federal employees must either get the COVID-19 vaccine or comply with regular testing and social distancing protocols. The Democratic leader also ordered nursing homes to mandate their staff to get the vaccine or else he would withdraw Medicare and Medicaid funding.
The Biden administration failed to achieve its 70% vaccination rate by the Fourth of July. The U.S. has also seen a major spike in new cases due to the more contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. Right now, only 53.8% of eligible citizens in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, amounting to 177 million people.
According to the CDC COVID-19 tracker, the U.S.' number of new cases and deaths may have plateaued or is declining, as its seven day-average for new cases as of Tuesday showed 140,000 while deaths showed 1,022 versus September 1's seven day-average of new cases at 156,000 and 1,141 deaths.
