Delta Air Lines
Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian announced to employees in a public memo Wednesday that unvaccinated employees enrolled in the company's account-based healthcare plan will be subject to a $200 monthly price hike starting Nov.1, with Bastian highlighting the increased cost to cover employee hospitalizations.
"The average hospital stay for COVID-19 has cost Delta $50,000 per person," Bastian wrote in the memo. "This surcharge will be necessary to address the financial risk the decision to not vaccine is creating for our company. In recent weeks since the rise of the B.1.617.2 (Delta) varinat, all Delta employees who have been hospitalized with COVID were not fully vaccinated."
Unvaccinated employees will face other penalties as well, including indoor mask requirements effective immediately and mandatory weekly COVID testing effective Sept. 12. By the end of September, Delta will only provide COVID pay protection to fully vaccinated employees--meaning those who have received both Moderna
Bastian noted that about 75% of Delta's roughly 75,000 employees are already vaccinated against COVID and that "aggressiveness of the [Delta] variant means we need to get many more of our people vaccinated, and as close to 100 percent as possible."
Delta's new COVID measures are the latest attempt by a U.S. airline to increase vaccination rates among its staff. Although the above measures seem very restrictive, Delta's policy is less strict than competitor United Airlines
The effort by airlines to vaccinate employees could be helped by the recent full Food and Drug Administration approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine earlier this week. Alaska Airlines
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