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Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. said Thursday it will require all U.S. employees to be vaccinated for COVID-19 by Nov. 15, the latest move by an Indianapolis-based company to react to the highly contagious delta variant that is sweeping the nation.
The mandate covers about 15,400 Lilly employees in numerous states and Puerto Rico, including about 11,000 in Indiana.
“As a science-based company, we have thoroughly reviewed all the data and options available to us,” Lilly said in a statement. “We believe this decision helps keep our employees, families and customers safe and healthy, and ensures we can continue making life-saving medicines for people around the world.”
Lilly joins most hospital systems in central Indiana, along with a few manufacturing and food-processing companies, in requiring employees to get vaccinated.
The move is an escalation in Lilly’s reaction to the pandemic. Two weeks ago, it announced that it reinstated its mask requirements for all in-office employees and contractors in Indiana, regardless of vaccination status.
Lilly said it will consider requests for medical or religious accommodations on an individual basis.
“Our top priority during this pandemic has been to protect the health and safety of our employees and ensure business continuity–today’s decision reflects that commitment,” the company said.
The Indiana State Department of Health on Thursday reported 3,186 new cases of COVID-19 statewide, the highest number of new cases since Jan. 23, when 3,188 were reported. Marion County reported 417 new COVID-19 cases, the most in the county since Jan. 22.
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Corporate America took way too long to require employees to get vaccinated and the economy is paying the price.
Too bad corporate America had to step up at all. If everything COVID had not been politicized from the start, this would be a different story.
I agree, but it was obvious from the beginning that this would be a political issue. The corporations should’ve seen this coming and acted sooner.
It’s only a political issue because one party is a home to cranks and a “leadership” that tells people want they want to hear, not what they need to hear.
“According to two of the sources who have spoken to Trump about this, he has occasionally referenced polling and other indicators—such as what he’s seen on TV—that show how the vaccines are unpopular with many of his supporters. This has left the impression with some of those close to Trump that he doesn’t want to push too hard on the subject, so as to not “piss off his base,” one of the two people said.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-keeps-rejecting-pleas-from-allies-for-pro-vax-campaign
So glad to see our CEO have the backbone to make this mandate.
Having a back bone would be standing up against the political pressure…therefore, he has none….just falling in line like he’s been told.
Oh honey. Which political pressure the Left or Right? If you even breath, you fall in line with some sort of “political pressure”. Considering IN is a Right state I think he is resisting political pressure. Not to mention, it is smart business. Why run the risk of having your employees sick or dead from something that can help drastically? Having employees on production line who create medicine to be distributed to some of the sickest people in the world, don’t you think you want them to not carry this virus?
Pathetic. The colonel is turning over in his grave.
Yep… I could see how a man of science would be hurt by the stupidity of politicizing a public health issue.
@ Dan M Nice one!
Wrong! You have to have HEALTHY employees to show up to work to make life saving products!!
forced capitulation to an experimental drug using liberal US corporations as their agent, because the fed gov’t cant get it across the finish line thru dissemination of facts alone, is and should be deemed illegal. Supreme court has to weigh in soon
“Liberal US Corporations” lol what a joke. You think every company is Google? It’s by far the outlier. The Republican Party has been owned by politically and socially conservative corporate America for decades.
By the way, the Supreme Court has weighed in on mandatory vaccinations before, but you would have only heard about it if you took 5 free seconds to do an ounce of research before spouting your made-up nonsense. From Jacobson v. Massachusetts: “It is within the police power of a State to enact a compulsory vaccination law.” That’s about as cut and dry as it gets.
And in case you think 1905 is too old and you want something written by a modern white conservative (instead of all those liberal hippie Justices from the 1900’s, I guess?), check out the most recent federal appeals court opinion which was written by Judge Frank Easterbrook, a conservative who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. But now you probably think Reagan was some kind of liberal spy, sent from the future to ruin the 80s…
The Supreme Court denied to hear the case yesterday.
I don’t think you understand Jacobson, M.H. STATES have the ability to enact compulsory vaccination laws, the federal government does not. Indiana has not enacted a compulsory Covid-19 vaccination law. Jeffery R. believes the federal government is using private corporations to get around their inability to either mandate vaccinations directly or convince states to create mandates.
Regardless of whether or not Jeffery R. is right, you’re talking past him when you quote Jacobson.
Yes. Because Lilly and all the big corporations always do whatever some agency of the federal government would like them to.
Oh honey. Which political pressure the Left or Right? If you even breath, you fall in line with some sort of “political pressure”. Considering IN is a Right state I think he is resisting political pressure? Not to mention, it is smart business. Why run the risk of having your employees sick or dead if something is available (with one of the large clinical trials ever to date) that can help prevent it? Having employees on production line who create medicine to be distributed to some of the sickest people in the world, don’t you think you want them to not carry this virus?
Well said KK!!
Some think it ironic that a company who creates vaccines (among other medical wonders) would require all of its workforce to be jabbed with an “experimental” vaccine. Whatever happened to the ability to think critically?
I’d be interested in the percentage currently vaccinated. Many Lilly employees used their critical thinking skills to get the vaccine as soon as they were eligible. Depending on the area of the company in which they work they would know: that the number of people receiving the vaccine in the clinical trials was sufficient to test safety, that FDA will dig into the data submitted not just rubber stamp it, and that important vaccine side effects have been seen within 2 months of the injection with other vaccines. Others know that the reason the vaccine was developed “so much faster” than other vaccines was not because science was skipped. It was fast because the technology was used in clinical trials for other viruses like zika and HIV and because government guaranteed payment/reimbursement of money spent even if the vaccine failed. Typically, pharma companies stage their investments so less money is spent on failures. Pfizer was guaranteed $2billion. So they didn’t need to worry about spending hundreds of millions to modify their manufacturing plants to churn out millions of vials of vaccine before they even knew it worked. If companies did that for every medicine they took into clinical trials, they would be broke quickly.
Wasn’t Operation Warp Speed under the Trump administration? You can’t have it both ways (but of course, you can try). Kudos to Lilly. Looking forward to Cummins being next.
I guess “following the science ” is not in Lilly’s vocabulary.
That’s what happens when you become part of the global Establishment.