News Room

This week, a widely shared tweet attempted to cast doubt around COVID-19 vaccines that must be stored at ultracold temperatures. “Any vaccine that needs to be shipped and stored at -80 degrees isn’t a vaccine. It’s a transfection agent, kept alive so it can infect your cells and transfer genetic material. Don’t let them fool you. This is genetic manipulation of humans on a massive scale. Shut it down,” the tweet falsely stated. Two of the leading vaccine candidates are created with messenger RNA, known also as mRNA.

With at least two COVID-19 vaccines expected to receive federal approval in the U.S. within a matter of weeks, hopes for beating the coronavirus are looking up. Yet for millions of workers and businesses, the emerging immunizations also raise a host of questions, not the least of which is this: Can your employer require that you get vaccinated? The answer: Yes, in many cases, employment attorneys said.

Weeks before states expect to receive their first shipments of Covid-19 vaccines, conflicting messages from the federal government have obscured exactly how many doses may arrive. Some governors, including New York’s Andrew Cuomo and California’s Gavin Newsom, have made splashy announcements about how much of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s vaccines they expect should the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorize them this month. Other states can’t provide a solid answer given how quickly estimates change.