He also looks to upcoming events in downtown Frederick.
Frederick, MD (KB) Frederick City Mayor Michael O’Connor joined WFMD’s Morning News Express to discuss vaccine requirements for city employees.
“The conversations that we’re having in the city are really about how we can be sure that we know, with some level of certainty, whether employees have been vaccinated or not so that we can organize our workforce accordingly and take all appropriate precautions,” he explained.
He said there is a process for employees who test positive for the coronavirus.
“We follow the CDC guidance on trying to do contact tracing and then determining what level of isolation or quarantine may be required — that may depend on whether the individual was vaccinated or not vaccinated,” O’Connor said.
The Mayor said currently employees are not required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Prior to the vaccine, the biggest concern was, I mean, we obviously didn’t want our employees to get sick and die — that’s what we don’t want for anyone in our community,” he said. “Now that we have a vaccine, we don’t want a situation where we lose operations because employees make a decision not to get a vaccine and that decision has some sort of ripple effect in the organization.”
With events like “In the Streets” and the Great Frederick Fair coming up, Mayor O’Connor said those conducting the events should consider requiring guests to wear masks and take simple precautions to reduce community spread of the virus.
“I’m not sure that cancelling events from occurring is going to get us to the other side,” he said. “What’s going to get us to the other side — we can cancel all the events in the world — if more people don’t take vaccines, that’s going to be a problem. This is going to continue to stay with us until a substantial proportion of the population as a whole is willing to be vaccinated.”
Mayor O’Connor also encouraged local organizations to promote vaccinations for employees. He said organizations should do their best to minimize their spread of COVID-19 in our community.