Biden has ordered employers with over 100 employees to require weekly testing or vaccines.
Biden's plan also requires that federal employees and healthcare workers be vaccinated.
These new measures are intended to counter Delta's threat in the USA.
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Biden's administration has made it mandatory for employers with more 100 employees to require weekly testing or vaccines. This will have a significant impact on more than 80 million workers.
According to The Washington Post, the administration will also impose fines up to $14,000 per violation on employers who ignore these mandates.
This is part of a wider plan to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Biden announced it Thursday afternoon.
This plan also includes mandates for vaccines for federal employees, contractors to federal agencies, as well as staff at all healthcare facilities that are eligible for federal funding from Medicare and Medicaid. These workers, unlike employees in private companies, would not be able to have routinely tested to ensure they are vaccinated.
Biden stated that federal employees must be fully vaccinated, or have their routinely tested and wear a mask. Biden also required COVID-19 vaccinations for staff at nursing homes.
Biden will counter the Delta variant's threat to the US by introducing new mandates and making it more difficult for federal workers not to comply with existing ones.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the variant accounts for over 90% of COVID-19-related cases in the US. Although daily cases are starting to decrease, they remain at an average of 136,000 per day. Anthony Fauci, White House Chief Medical Advisor, stated to Axios daily coronavirus cases should be under 10,000 in order for it not to pose a threat to public health.
The average daily death and hospitalization rates are still high at around 100,000 and 1,000, respectively.
Experts in public-health agree that increasing vaccination rates is the only way to end the current surge.
"What is likely is that there will be more and more mandates to immunization from other sectors," Chris Beyrer of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said to Insider.
He said, "For people who refuse to comply with these mandates or choose not to," that "it's likely going be so difficult with all the testing and restrictions that it's going become very difficult if you aren't immunized."
