With declining demand for employee vaccination against COVID-19, the occupational medical provider serving the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington Site will soon be offering only one option, Moderna, for initial inoculations or booster shots.
The provider of occupational medical services, HMP Corp. (HMPC), is dropping the Pfizer shot after March 24 and discontinuing the Johnson & Johnson shot after July 7 due to decreased demand for COVID-19 vaccinations at the former plutonium production complex, according to the notice signed by HPMC’s president and project manager at Hanford, Hiram Whitmer, posted on the Hanford DOE website Monday.
The contractor will continue to offer the Moderna vaccine until further notice as the Moderna vaccine is approved by the Food and Drug Administration and endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “for use as a booster regardless of the initial series received,” according to the HPMC notice.
For those seeking vaccinations, HPMC continues to offer vaccination appointments on Thursdays, the firm said.
On the other side of the country, DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, is no longer offering onsite COVID-19 vaccinations. The shots are still being offered, however, through a contractor at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, another DOE spokesperson said.
The DOE’s Office of Environmental Management has said upwards of 90% of its federal employees and contract workers are already vaccinated against the virus that had as of Wednesday claimed the lives of more than 970,000 Americans.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit was pending in federal court in the Eastern District of Washington brought by almost 300 plaintiffs, including Hanford security guards, seeking to block enforcement of a federal vaccination mandate at the site.
Thanks to the current low levels of COVID-19 within Benton and Franklin Counties in Washington, federal employees are not required to wear masks or be tested at Hanford Site facilities this week regardless of vaccination status. The DOE managers at Hanford review the need for masking weekly given local infection rates.
