Executive Order Compels COVID Tests For City Of Houston Employees

Houston TX

08 September, 2021

5:15 PM

Description

HOUSTON, TX — Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner issued an executive order Wednesday that will require all City of Houston employees who are not fully vaccinated to submit COVID-19 test results twice a month. Executive Order 1-71, also called COVID-19 Mitigation Safety Measures, will require unvaccinated employees of the city to submit test results on the 1st and 15th of every month, with tests conducted on the 1st through 15th of every month due on the 15th and tests between the 16th and 31st of every month due on the 1st. Employees who are fully vaccinated, which occurs two weeks after the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines or the first dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, will be exempt from the executive order. The order also allows for medical and religious exemptions, which must be submitted and approved. Employees who do not follow the executive order could face punishment, including termination or suspension. Testing, vaccination, and exemption information will remain confidential, and kept separate from general personnel files, and retained in accordance with the law. The Houston Fire Department announced Friday the death of 39-year-old Tanner Reed, an engineer operator with the department, after his battle with COVID-19. A Houston Public Works employee also died with COVID-19 over the weekend, according to a press release from Turner's office. "I cannot stand by and watch employees continue to get sick, and in some cases die, from a disease that we know how to manage," Turner said in the release. "The virus is having an impact on our workforce and the city's ability to provide services directly to the public. Overall, the city continues to see hundreds of new COVID-19 patients being admitted to the hospitals in the Texas Medical Center each day. While there are breakthrough cases, full vaccination is the best defense against COVID-19 and its variants, like delta. The vaccine protects our first responders, our emergency care workers, and the hospital system as a whole."