only to get themselves vaccinated but also to get their family members vaccinated. that means employers can get reimbursed if they give parents time off with paid time, paid leave to take their kids or their own parents to get vaccinated. so i m calling on all employees across the country to give paid time off to get the shot or to help a family member do so. i promise you it will cost you the employer nothing. you ll be reimbursed. secondly, i m announcing that we ll continue the work with states to encourage unvaccinated people to get vaccinated. in february, a grocery store chain kroger s offered $100 to their associates if they would get vaccinated, and it worked. vaccination rates moved up from 50% to 75% among their
disease control and prevention, the cdc announced its new mask recommendation in parts of the country where covid cases are substantially higher where people didn t get vaccinated, which they define as 50 new cases for every 100,000 people in a week. the cdc recommends you wear a mask when you re in public and indoors like work or in a grocery store. that s true for both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. why? because even if you ve been fully vaccinated and protected from severe illness from covid-19 you could have the delta variant in your system and spread it to someone who isn t vaccinated. we need to wear masks to protect each other and to stop the rapid spread of this virus as we work to get more people vaccinated. and i hope all americans who live in areas with substantial
prove you ve been vaccinated, you have to be tested. secretary austin said he was already considering mandating the vaccine after it was fully approved. would you like to see the mandate go into effect before full approval, and do you think he s open to that? i know he s open to it, and the question is when is the right time to get the most bang for the buck when you do it? a lot of this is timing. i think it s going to happen. look, the one thing that you all are politely and appropriately referencing is that it s still a temporary approval. so when does the final approval come? it usually takes a lot of a lot of work to get there. i made a commitment i would not tell anyone in the justice
significant. millions of people are out of work, out of homes, out of hope and going hungry. remember those long lines, people in their automobiles waiting for a box of food to be put in their trunk? experts and pundits said we couldn t get the vaccines, and then if we could get the vaccines, we couldn t get them in people s arms, we couldn t get them vaccinated. they predicted our economy would collapse. remember how we stayed focused and how we went to work. in six months we got 164 million americans fully vaccinated because we vaccinated so many people, put in place so many safety measures and got economic help to businesses and people most in need our economy is recovering. more than 3 million americans are back to work since i was sworn in. faster job growth than any previous administration, any. we re experiencing the fastest
low and disease is prevalent. next, every federal government employee will be asked to attest to their vaccination status. anyone who does not attest or is not vaccinated will be required to mask no matter where they work test one or two times a week to see if they ve acquired covid, socially distance, and generally will not be allowed to travel for work. like wise, today i m directing my administration to take steps to apply similar standards to all federal contractors. if you want to do business with the federal government, get your workers vaccinated. the chamber of commerce, representing tens of thousands of american businesses, the national association of manufacturers, the business round table is comprised of the largest and biggest corporations