Vaccine mandate

AllDay supermarket gives a discount of P200 for a minimum single-receipt purchase worth P3,000 to fully vaccinated shoppers. The discount is triple the maximum accorded to seniors and PWDs for groceries.

For dine-in, the discount is 10 percent at Jollibee, McDonald, Burger King, Chowking, Greenwich and Mang Inasal.

Several establishments, notably restaurants and those offering personal grooming services, now display signs declaring that all employees are 100 percent fully vaccinated. Some of the establishments also offer discounts to clients with vaccination cards.

Consumers are now asking major retail outlets and service providers if they have similar perks for the fully vaccinated.

These are the benign incentives for getting a COVID jab.

What has run into turbulence is the effort of employers to keep workplaces virus-free, not only by promoting compliance with COVID safety protocols but also by requiring everyone to get vaccinated, or else… ? The alternative may have to be settled by the Supreme Court.

Obviously, the biggest problem in making vaccination mandatory is the still limited supply of COVID jabs. Regardless of what the government imagines the situation to be, the country still lacks vaccines, even in the region with the highest inoculation rate, Metro Manila.

On the other hand, there are private companies that obtained enough vaccine doses for all their employees and immediate families. Can such companies make vaccination mandatory? And if an employee is an anti-vaxxer, can he or she be effectively placed in the freezer, without pay since no work is being done?

Such a situation arises, for example, in a therapeutic massage spa or beauty salon, where the services rendered require physical contact between employees and clients.

As of yesterday the word from the labor department was that “no jab, no pay” is OK, but only in certain establishments identified by the pandemic task force.

The government has also made it clear that an employee cannot be fired for refusing to get vaccinated.

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I used to have home massage service every weekend, plus nail grooming every other week in different salons. Since COVID struck, however, I have contented myself with my personal full body massage chair. I trim my own nails and I’ve learned to cut my own hair. And with Netflix, why do I have to watch a movie in a cinema (with such steep rates)?

When do I intend to return to personal grooming establishments? Only when it’s safe enough to stop wearing face masks. But maybe those signs about fully vaccinated staff can change my mind sooner. Such signs, combined with visible adherence to distancing and other health protocols by both employees and customers, can surely entice me to resume indoor dining.

This would be similar to my attitude toward smoking in public places. While everyone has a right to his own poison, smokers have no right to poison me with their secondhand smoke. It takes a month of treatment with expensive antibiotics before my smoke-induced cough disappears. After my bout with COVID, my sensitivity to secondhand smoke is likely to have intensified.

I don’t return to any establishment that has no efficient division between smoking and non-smoking areas, or efficient exhaust systems. A high-end restaurant in a particular casino complex is the worst; the secondhand smoke from the casino is all over the entire floor.

Being a believer in vaccination, I don’t like being in establishments manned by anti-vaxxers. I have already suffered grievous loss due to COVID and I don’t intend to add to my nightmare.

I’m sure this attitude is not unique. As of yesterday, nearly 2.8 million people have contracted COVID in our country, with 41,793 deaths. Health experts believe the actual figures are much higher. All survivors as well as relatives and friends of the deceased, or who have personal knowledge about the suffering of others, will be careful in resuming pre-pandemic activities. Most are aware that the unvaccinated are at highest risk of getting infected and transmitting the virus.

Awareness of these risks has to be a major reason for continued low foot traffic in enclosed commercial centers, despite the easing of Metro Manila to Alert Level 3.

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Over the weekend I visited a high-end mall where children accompanied by adults as well as the elderly have been allowed. There was a decent crowd in an outdoor area where a food market was set up; this was where the families with the kids and pet dogs congregated. But inside the air-conditioned sections, for a Saturday near the end of October, the foot traffic was dismal.

So it’s understandable that employers would want to announce truthfully to the world that their workforce is 100 percent fully vaccinated.

And it would be understandable if they don’t let an anti-vaxxer give customers a massage, a hair trim or a foot spa, for example, or even serve as receptionist.

Would an employee trained for mani-pedi or hair grooming agree to be relegated to sweeping the floor or sorting out nail polish – tasks that require no physical contact with clients – and would the employee agree to get a commensurate pay cut?

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In the US, the country with the worst COVID toll, President Joe Biden ordered last month sweeping vaccine mandates affecting about 100 million workers in both the private and public sectors. The rules for the vaccine mandate, which will affect about two-thirds of the private sector workforce, will be out this month. The requirement is expected to face a slew of legal challenges.

An obvious difference is that the US has enough COVID vaccines to inoculate its entire population of about 330 million, including children, with third doses and boosters also readily available. The jabs can be obtained even in pharmacies. At this point, if an American is unvaccinated, it is most likely by choice.

In our case, we are still far from achieving the inoculation of up to 90 percent of the population – said to be the proper threshold for herd immunity against the highly infectious Delta variant.

But certain businesses and activities will clearly benefit from having fully vaccinated staff: mass transportation, manufacturing plants, construction, hotels and restaurants, retail stores, and of course gyms, spas and personal grooming. Government offices especially those that deal heavily with the public must also have vaccinated staff.

Even before enough vaccines become available, many offices are now moving to promote vaccination for safer workplaces. If the government wants to speed up economic revival, it should quickly release clear-cut guidelines on vaccination policies.