BOISE, Idaho — The City of Boise announced Thursday that all newly-hired employees will be required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
The condition does not apply to current employees, although city leaders say they are continuing to "recommend" that all staff get vaccinated.
“We need to take action to ensure uninterrupted city services and programming, and to protect the health and safety of our community, especially our most vulnerable, our children,” said Boise Mayor Lauren McLean in a statement. “We will soon hire hundreds of employees for our Spring/Summer activities, like pools and Playcamps, and those new employees will be coaching and teaching thousands of children. We need to do this now to keep our kids safe.”
The new policy goes into effect Jan. 3, 2022, and will apply to temporary and contract employees as well as permanent workers.
Any new hire will have to have had two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, two weeks before their start date.
“We have an obligation to our employees to do what we can to keep them as healthy as possible,” McLean said. “Vaccines are a big piece of that.”
At KTVB, we’re focusing our news coverage on the facts and not the fear around the virus. To see our full coverage, visit our coronavirus section, here: www.ktvb.com/coronavirus.
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