January 28, 2022 — The US Supreme Court on January 13 blocked President Joe Biden’s attempt to mandate that businesses must require their employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or else wear masks and be tested regularly. This “emergency standard” was to have been applied by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, carrying out its responsibility under long-standing legislation to protect workers facing serious danger in the workplace.
In some countries, governments have imposed vaccine mandates on their entire populations, or at least on all workers. They include Austria, Ecuador, and Indonesia. Germany is currently deciding on a mandate. Many more, like Italy, have imposed the requirement on subsets of the population, such as health workers or those over 50.