Surgeon general says Americans should expect more vaccine mandates following FDA approval of Pfizer vaccine

The U.S. Surgeon General on Sunday told Americans to expect more private businesses to implement vaccine mandates following the FDA's full approval of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

"For businesses and universities that have been thinking about putting vaccine requirements in place in order to create safer spaces for people to work and learn, I think that this move from the FDA ... will actually help them to move forward with those kinds of plans," U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told CNN on Sunday.

The Food and Drug Administration acted Monday to give full approval to the Pfizer vaccine after previously authorizing the emergency use of three COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S.

Pfizer's vaccine was approved after months of review for quality, safety, and effectiveness.

"The FDA's approval of this vaccine is a milestone as we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. While this and other vaccines have met the FDA's rigorous, scientific standards for emergency use authorization, as the first FDA-approved COVID-19 vaccine, the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product," Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D, said.

"Our scientific and medical experts conducted an incredibly thorough and thoughtful evaluation of this vaccine. We evaluated scientific data and information included in hundreds of thousands of pages, conducted our own analyses of Comirnaty's safety and effectiveness, and performed a detailed assessment of the manufacturing processes, including inspections of the manufacturing facilities," Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said.

"We have not lost sight that the COVID-19 public health crisis continues in the U.S. and that the public is counting on safe and effective vaccines. The public and medical community can be confident that although we approved this vaccine expeditiously, it was fully in keeping with our existing high standards for vaccines in the U.S," he added.

The FDA's full approval of the COVID-19 vaccines is widely expected to give a measure of assurance to vaccine-hesitant Americans and perhaps convince some who have not yet been vaccinated to get shots.

Large corporations including Google, Disney, Facebook, McDonald's, Twitter, and many more are already requiring that workers get vaccinated before returning to the office. Local and state governments have also implemented vaccine requirements for employees, though several states with Republican governors have moved to ban local officials from imposing vaccine or mask mandates.

According to MarketWatch, some employers face lingering concerns on imposing vaccine requirements, citing resistance from employees or the effect it will have on company culture and morale. With many businesses struggling to find workers to fill positions, some employers don't want to alienate potential hires by requiring vaccination.

However, a Gallup poll published last week suggested that most workers are in favor of vaccine mandates. A plurality of 36% of U.S. workers surveyed said they strongly favor vaccine mandates, and 52% of workers overall support the requirements.

COVID-19 vaccines remain effective at preventing severe illness and death, except in exceedingly rare cases, but as CDC Director Rochelle Walensky noted two weeks ago, "What they can't do anymore is prevent transmission."

That's because the Delta variant, which is more contagious than previous variants of the virus, has demonstrated it is capable of causing breakthrough infections among those who have received a COVID-19 vaccine.

For the vast majority of people who have been vaccinated, breakthrough infections of COVID-19 cause only mild symptoms.

The risk of infection and severe disease or death remains much higher for unvaccinated individuals. The CDC recommends that everyone age 12 years old and older should get vaccinated to be protected from COVID-19.

A new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that preventable hospitalizations of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients has cost the U.S. health care system over $2 billion.