An El Nino-less summer is coming. Here's what that could mean for Canada
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After months of encouraging employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19, companies are beginning to take a harder line and roll out mandates — a dramatic escalation of Corporate America's approach to halting the spread of the virus.
Momentum for vaccine mandates has been building, and President Joe Biden was expected on Thursday to announce a requirement that all federal employees and contractors be vaccinated or be required to submit to regular testing and mitigation requirements. On Wednesday, Google and Facebook became the first two Silicon Valley giants to issue mandates of their own.
Here are the companies that have announced COVID-19 vaccine requirements for at least some of their employees.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent an email to staff Wednesday announcing a vaccine requirement for employees who are coming back to the office. The policy would roll out in the United States in the coming weeks and in other regions in the following months as vaccines become more widely available, Pichai said. It's not clear how Google plans to enforce the policy.
All Facebook employees must get vaccinated before coming back to the office, the company announced Wednesday. "As our offices reopen, we will be requiring anyone coming to work at any of our US campuses to be vaccinated," Lori Goler, Facebook's VP of people said in a statement. "We will have a process for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons and will be evaluating our approach in other regions as the situation evolves," she added.
Netflix is requiring COVID-19 vaccines for the casts of all its US productions, as well as the people who come in contact with them, according to Deadline. Last week, Hollywood unions and major studios hammered out return-to-work protocols that include "the option to implement mandatory vaccination policies for casts and crew in Zone A" on a production-by-production basis. "Zone A," consists of the actors and the people who come in close proximity to them.
BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, is currently allowing only vaccinated employees to return to the office, a spokesperson for the company said. This decision is a policy adjustment based on employee feedback and an employee survey, the spokesperson said. From September the company will have a "hybrid model," with some vaccinated employees working from the office and others from home, the spokesperson added. The company is planning to share an updated policy for unvaccinated employees later in the summer.
Morgan Stanley's New York office is banning all unvaccinated staff and clients from entering its headquarters. All employees who work in buildings with a "large employee presence" were required to confirm their vaccination status by July 1, according to a company memo to employees.
Luxury department store chain Saks Fifth Avenue is requiring that all employees be vaccinated, the the New York Times reported. "We need to be much more office-based," and "the default needs to be our office," CEO Marc Metrick told the Times.
All new hires and current employees of the Washington Post will be required to demonstrate proof of full COVID-19 vaccinations, the company's publisher and CEO Fred Ryan said in a memo to employees Tuesday. Ryan stated that the requirement is a "condition of employment" beginning with the publication's return to the office on September 13.
Ascension Health announced that it will require COVID-19 vaccinations for all of its employees "for the safety of patients and visitors, our associates, our families and loved ones, and the community," according to a Tuesday press release from the company. "Ascension will require that all associates be vaccinated against COVID-19, whether or not they provide direct patient care, and whether they work in our sites of care or remotely," the company said in the statement.
As of August 2, all employees working in Lyft's offices are required to be vaccinated, according to an email Lyft CEO Logan Green sent to staffers that was viewed by CNN Business. In addition, the majority of the company's offices in the United States will now return to the office on February 2, 2022, according to the email, a six-month extension from the company's original return-to-office date. Lyft informed team members several weeks ago that they will be required to submit proof of vaccination in order to return to the office, a spokesperson told CNN Business.
Twitter was already requiring employees who returned to the office to show proof of vaccination, but the company on Wednesday took the additional step of closing its offices in New York and San Francisco completely and pause further office reopenings.
The company took the call "after careful consideration of the CDC's updated guidelines, and in light of current conditions," a spokesperson told CNN Business. "We're continuing to closely monitor local conditions and make necessary changes that prioritize the health and safety of our Tweeps."
-- Rishi Iyengar contributed to this report.
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Canada Post is increasing stamp prices for the third time since 2019, a move the Crown corporation says is a "reality" of its sales-based revenue structure.
The federal New Democrats are calling out Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his party for trying to block the bill that could pave the way for millions of Canadians to access birth control and diabetes coverage.
Defence lawyers of Jeremy Skibicki have admitted in court the accused killed four Indigenous women, but argues he is not criminally responsible for the deaths by way of mental disorder – this latest development has triggered a judge-alone trial rather than a jury trial.
A daily spoonful of olive oil could lower your risk of dying from dementia, according to a new study by Harvard scientists.
An Ontario MPP was asked again to leave the Ontario legislature on Monday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment that was banned by the Speaker last month due to its political symbolism.
H5N1 or avian flu is decimating wildlife around the world and is now spreading among cattle in the United States, sparking concerns about 'pandemic potential' for humans. Now a health expert is urging Canada to scale up surveillance north of the border.
Democratic Institutions Minister Dominic LeBlanc will be tabling legislation on Monday aimed at countering foreign interference in Canada. Federal officials have scheduled a technical briefing on the incoming bill for Monday afternoon.
Polish prosecutors have discontinued an investigation into human skeletons found at a site where German dictator Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders spent time during the Second World War because the advanced state of decay made it impossible to determine the cause of death, a spokesman said Monday.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.