Biden's deadline for a vaccine mandate

Plus, the UK approves a pill treatment for Covid-19.

The Biden administration sets a deadline for millions of US workers to be vaccinated; the UK is the first nation to approve an oral treatment for Covid-19.    Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes. TOP NEWS Biden sets January 4 deadline for vaccine mandate      Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images The Biden administration announced Thursday a deadline of January 4 for large private companies — those with more than 100 employees — to have their workforces fully vaccinated or undergo Covid-19 tests at least weekly. Health care workers at facilities receiving federal funding must also be vaccinated by this date. [The White House] The administration announced in September the plan for such large-scale vaccine mandates; some large employers, like United Airlines, began implementing rules even earlier for their employees to be vaccinated. However, other corporations, like the nation's largest employer Walmart, have yet to issue guidance regarding vaccinations for all their employees. [NYT / Lauren Hirsch] A 490-page document from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — OSHA — issues guidance around how employers are to implement the vaccine-or-testing mandate. The guidance stipulates that employers must give employees time off to get the vaccine and to recover from any side effects, and that employers aren't required to pay for testing. [NPR / Andrea Hsu] The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released its guidance for about 17 million workers in health care facilities that receive Medicaid and Medicare funding, too; those workers will not have the option to undergo frequent testing rather than get the vaccine, though. [McClatchy / Bailey Aldridge] The new rules will apply to more than 80 million private sector workers — but many of those people are already vaccinated. There's also the possibility that OSHA will expand the mandate to apply to smaller businesses. [AP / David Koenig] As with everything Covid-related, there has been pushback to the new mandates, with Republicans already threatening legal challenges. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tweeted that he will sue the government over the "illegal, unconstitutional regulation." [Washington Post / Eli Rosenberg] The UK is the first nation to approve Merck's Covid-19 pill  The UK's Medicines and Health care products Regulatory Agency is the first regulatory agency in the world to approve Merck and Ridgeback Therapeutics's Covid-19 pill treatment, called molnupiravir. The government has purchased 480,000 doses of the treatment, set to arrive by mid-November. [Guardian / Ian Sample] The twice-a-day tablet is used to treat people who have already contracted the virus and can be taken at home, instead of administered in a healthcare setting. The British government is reserving the treatment for elderly and otherwise vulnerable people. [BBC / Jim Reed] Molnupiravir works by "lethal mutagenesis," essentially by hijacking the virus's RNA genome and creating faulty mutations until the virus population dies out. The treatment is only suitable for mild to moderate cases of Covid, and must be taken early in the course of the illness to be effective. [Nature / Cassandra Willyard] The treatment will go by the commercial name Lagevrio, and clinical trial data shows that it reduces the risk of hospitalization or death from Covid by 50 percent. "I think getting an oral pill that can inhibit viral replication — that can inhibit this virus — is going to be a real game changer," former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said of the results last month. [CNN / Jamie Gumbrecht] MISCELLANEOUS Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who contributed to the Steele dossier — a document that contained unverified claims about the Trump campaign's connections to Russia, was arrested and charged with five counts of lying to the FBI about his sources for the claims. [NYT / Adam Goldman and Charlie Savage]   Norway's largest pension fund, KLP, announced that it would divest from 14 companies including Raytheon, Rolls-Royce, and Dassault due to their roles in manufacturing nuclear and conventional weapons. [Deutsche Welle] Spanish police took down a massive international human smuggling ring, which had taken people from camps in the Balkans into Europe, charging between 3,000 and 8,000 euros per trip. [Reuters] American Girl dolls, Cabbage Patch Kids, Battleship, Risk, and sand were all inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame. [Associated Press]   VERBATIM "In the near future we will have left behind all fossil fuels and live in a new and sustainable energy world based on renewable energy." [Svenja Schulze, the German environment minister, on the announcement of a coalition including 18 countries as well as banks and other organizations to phase out coal use.] LISTEN TO THIS     Sean Illing talks with John McWhorter, linguist, New York Times columnist, and author of Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America about the societal implications of the way we talk — and don't talk — about racism. [Spotify] Read more from Vox November's movie calendar is packed. Here are 14 must-sees.   A new Supreme Court case could gut the government's power to fight climate change   The pandemic was hard for everyone — except maybe landlords   The curious case of the ancient whale bones   The complicated promise of Amazon's space internet     This email was sent to vox@quicklydone.com. 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