All Penn State employees at all locations are required to meet a COVID-19 vaccination requirement either under the federal contractor mandate or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, mandate issued by the Biden Administration, the university said in a statement Thursday.
According to President Joe Biden’s executive order, federal contractors must receive their final dose of COVID-19 vaccine by Jan. 4, 2022 unless they are granted medical or religious accommodation, without having testing as an alternative.
Employees at nine Penn State campuses — Altoona, Behrend, Berks, Brandywine, DuBois, Fayette, Harrisburg, Schuylkill and University Park — including Penn State Extension, as well as those employed by Penn State College of Medicine fall under this mandate.
Penn State said Friday that all of its employees not covered under the federal contractor requirement will be subject to the OSHA Emergency Temporary Standard on Vaccination and Testing. Under the OSHA mandate, employers with 100 or more employees will require workers to be vaccinated or tested weekly, although submission of proof or requests for exemption would not apply.
The Jan. 4 deadline for employees to receive their final dose of a vaccine — either their second dose of Pfizer or Moderna, or the single dose of Johnson & Johnson — applies to both mandates.
About 33,600 employees work at Penn State and about 25,000 among them are at University Park, according to a university spokesperson.
Nearly 85% of University Park full-time employees have provided proof of their vaccination as of the latest update to Penn State’s COVID-19 dashboard on Thursday.
The federal contractor mandate also applies to part-time faculty and staff, technical services workers and students on university payroll, but their rates of vaccination are not included on the dashboard.
