SEATTLE — Alaska Airlines is requiring new hires to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by the time they start work, as the company continues to mull a vaccine mandate for current employees, KIRO-TV reported.
In a statement obtained by the news station, officials with the airline said they aimed “to have as many employees vaccinated as possible.”
“We have not yet made a decision on a vaccine requirement for current employees but did implement two new policies to help us reach this goal,” the statement said. “All new hires at Alaska and Horizon must now be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by their date of hire. In addition, current unvaccinated employees who become exposed to or infected with COVID-19, will no longer be paid for their quarantine time.”
The announcement comes weeks after airline officials told employees that they were considering making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory, according to a company memo obtained last month by CNBC. In the memo, the company said that it planned to wait until after the Food and Drug Administration had given full approval to one of the COVID-19 vaccines available nationwide, which it did on Aug. 23.
>> Related: Coronavirus: FDA grants full approval of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine
The company employs about 23,000 people for Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air.
Last month, United Airlines became the first to require COVID-19 vaccines for all its 67,000 employees.
>> Related: United Airlines first carrier to require COVID-19 vaccine for employees or risk firing
Other airlines, including Frontier Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, have since followed suit, according to CNBC. Others have incentivized, but not mandated, vaccines.
>> Related: Unvaccinated Delta Air Lines employees to face $200 monthly health care surcharge
Research has shown that vaccinated people can spread the highly transmissible delta variant of the virus, which accounts for more than 80% of COVID-19 cases reported across the country in recent weeks. However, health officials have emphasized that fully vaccinated people are well protected against severe illness and death due to COVID-19.
As of Wednesday, more than 52% of the U.S. population, or 174.6 million people, have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Officials said 205.5 million people, or about 62% of the population, have gotten at least one dose of one of the available vaccines.
Since the start of the pandemic, officials have reported nearly 39.4 million COVID-19 cases nationwide, resulting in over 642,000 deaths, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University. Globally, 218.6 million COVID-19 cases have been reported, resulting in 4.5 million deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.
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