Belleville may implement a COVID shot mandate for city employees. Here are the details
As COVID cases surge this winter, the Belleville City Council is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a proposed ordinance that would require all city employees to get a COVID vaccine unless they have a medical or religious reason to not get vaccinated.
If employees are exempted from the mandatory vaccination, they must be tested for COVID-19 at least once every seven days if they are reporting to their workplace in person, according to the proposal.
“Vaccination is a vital tool to reduce the presence and severity of COVID-19 cases in the workplace, in communities, and in the nation as a whole,” the proposed vaccination policy states.
While Belleville aldermen consider this shot requirement, public health officials have sounded the alarm about the winter surge of coronavirus cases fueled by the omicron variant.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Monday said that hospitalizations are about as high as they were last winter before vaccines were widely available, according to a report from Capitol News Illinois. Some metro-east schools have canceled in-person classes this week because of the increase in coronavirus cases.
And St. Clair County officials last week said that area hospitals were nearing the record of COVID patients set in January 2020. Most of the hospitalized patients were not vaccinated.
Belleville Mayor Patty Gregory could not be reached for comment on Tuesday about the proposed shot mandate.
Here are highlights of Belleville’s seven-page vaccine mandate proposal:
▪ All city employees would have to be fully vaccinated by Feb. 8.
▪ To obtain this goal, all employees would have to obtain the first dose of a two-dose vaccine by Jan. 10 and the second dose by Jan. 25. If the employee opts for a single-dose vaccine, this must be done by Jan. 17.
▪ “Employees will be considered fully vaccinated two weeks after receiving the requisite number of doses of a COVID-19 vaccine,” the plan states.
▪ The proposed ordinance states it complies with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s mandate for vaccinations. President Joe Biden has ordered a shot mandate for companies with 100 or more employees, and a federal appeals court last month upheld the mandate. CNN has reported the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Friday on challenges to the Biden vaccine mandate.
▪ The Belleville ordinance would take effect immediately, if approved by aldermen.
Meeting via teleconference
The City Council is scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. Wednesday, and the meeting will be via teleconference as aldermen previously had done during the coronavirus pandemic.
To listen to the Wednesday night meeting, call 618-221-9621.
Shortly after the coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020, the council began meeting via teleconference and that practice continued until June 2021 when the council began holding in-person meetings.
This story was originally published January 4, 2022 at 12:36 PM.
