White House presses US airlines to quickly mandate vaccines for staff

The White House is pressing major US airlines to mandate coronavirus vaccines for employees by December 8 and showing no signs of extending the deadline, four sources told Reuters on Friday.

White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeffrey Zients spoke to the chief executives of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines on Thursday to ensure they were working expeditiously to develop and enforce vaccine requirements ahead of the December 8 deadline for federal contractors, the sources said.

Some airline officials had asked the White House to push back the requirements, signed by President Joe Biden last month, until after the busy holiday travel season.

Zients urged the airlines  "to act sooner than later to ensure as smooth of an implementation process as possible," one source said, and made clear the White House does not intend to relax the deadline.

Zients also urged them to look at the United Airlines vaccine requirement that was announced in August.