Los Alamos National Laboratory. Courtesy/LANL

LANL News:

Triad National Security, LLC, the entity that operates Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), will soon require COVID-19 vaccinations for its entire workforce.

Under the requirement, full vaccination will be mandatory for all regular employees and on-site contractors and on-site subcontractors. This requirement will apply to all employees working on-site, those teleworking, and all new hires.

LANL Director Thom Mason announced the requirement Monday afternoon in a memo to the Laboratory’s workforce. The announcement coincides with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision on Monday to grant full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for people age 16 and older.

“To meet our Laboratory’s critical mission requirements amid rising COVID-19 case rates in northern New Mexico and beyond, we must protect the entire workforce from the spread of this potentially severe disease. The best tool we have is vaccines,” Mason wrote in the memo. “With the recent announcement of full Food and Drug Administration approval for the Pfizer vaccine, along with the rapidly increasing number of infections, LANL has decided to make vaccines mandatory for all regular employees and on-site contractors and on-site subcontractors. This requirement will apply to all employees working on-site, those teleworking, and all new hires.”

More than 85 percent of the Laboratory’s employees and contractors are already fully vaccinated. The Laboratory will make an announcement in the near future about when all employees must be vaccinated.

Mason said the Laboratory’s operator, Triad National Security, LLC, wanted to announce the impending requirement in order to give the remaining unvaccinated Laboratory employees an opportunity to schedule their vaccination.

Once the requirement begins, employees, contractors and subcontractors who do not have a full vaccination card on file with the Laboratory’s Occupational Medicine office will be referred to line management who will work with Human Resources for determination of whether employment will continue.

Vaccines are available to all employees and contractors through the Laboratory’s Occupational Medicine office. Today’s announcement does not affect existing COVID-19 policies – face coverings are still required for all employees and visitors on-site, and mandatory COVID-19 testing of unvaccinated employees will continue.

About Los Alamos National Laboratory (www.lanl.gov)

Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is managed by Triad, a public service oriented, national security science organization equally owned by its three founding members: Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), and the Regents of the University of California (UC) for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.