Biden: Americans who have not been vaccinated against COVID-19 are putting the U.S. economy at risk

U.S. residents who have not yet been vaccinated against the new coronavirus are putting the country’s economy at risk. U.S. President Joe Biden said this on Thursday in a speech in Illinois.

“The fact is, this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated: our hospitals, emergency rooms and intensive care units are overflowing with the unvaccinated. Unvaccinated patients leave no room for those who have a heart attack or need cancer surgery. They simply can’t get into intensive care units and operating rooms. The unvaccinated also put our economy at risk because people don’t want to leave their homes even where there are no COVID-19-related restrictions,” the president said.

Stressing the need to vaccinate against the new coronavirus, Biden pointed out: “We know there is no other way to beat a pandemic than to vaccinate the vast majority of Americans.” “We still haven’t reached that level. We have to beat the pandemic. That’s why I have to move toward requiring vaccination of the population,” Joe Biden added.

He also stressed that COVID-19 rates in the country are falling. “We are beginning to record fewer cases of COVID-19 in most of the country. In the last month, COVID cases are down 40 percent and hospitalizations are down 25 percent. We’re moving in the right direction, keeping our finger on the pulse. We still have a long way to go,” Biden noted.

On September 9, Biden announced his intention to require company executives to require their employees to be vaccinated against the new coronavirus. He added that the Department of Labor is developing emergency regulations that would require employers with more than 100 employees to ensure their employees are fully vaccinated or test negative for COVID-19 at least once a week. Biden also announced mandatory vaccinations for all employees of the federal government and its contractors without exception.

More than 44.1 million cases of the coronavirus have been identified and nearly 709,000 people have died in the United States since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University, which does the count based on federal and local government information. For both of these indicators, the country ranks first in the world.