President Biden will announce on Thursday that all civilian federal employees must be vaccinated against the corona virus or to regularly test, socially distance and mask up on most travel. He said Tuesday that he was considering the move for federal employees.

“That’s under consideration right now,” Biden told reporters. “But if you’re not vaccinated, you’re not nearly as smart as I thought you were.” The upcoming mandate comes just days after the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention's recommendation that fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors in areas with high transmission as COVID-19 cases continue to rise and vaccination rates wane.

New York, the Department of Veteran Affairs and the state of California have also announced plans to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for many of their employees. After the guidance Tuesday, both states and several others recommended that everybody in the state, regardless of vaccination status, wear a mask at indoor public settings. The guidance changes come as COVID-19 deaths in the United States are once again over 2,000 per week, a analysis of Johns Hopkins University data found. New cases are also averaging more than 60,000 per day for the first time in more than three month.

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