United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby is crediting COVID vaccine mandates with saving the lives of his employees, with the company now going eight weeks without a death.
Vaccine mandates are a controversial topic, but it appears Kirby is a fan. United Airlines established a company-wide vaccine mandate, threatening to fire employees that refused to comply.
In an open letter to employees, Kirby acknowledged the company currently has 3,000 employees with the virus. Nevertheless, despite the number of cases, none of the vaccinated employees are hospitalized.
“The second and most important piece of good news is that our vaccine requirement is working – and saving lives,” Kirby wrote. “While we have about 3,000 employees who are currently positive for COVID, zero of our vaccinated employees are currently hospitalized. Since our vaccine policy went into effect, the hospitalization rate among our employees has been 100x lower than the general population in the U.S. Prior to our vaccine requirement, tragically, more than one United employee on average *per week* was dying from COVID. But we’ve now gone eight straight weeks with zero COVID-related deaths among our vaccinated employees – based on United’s prior experience and the nationwide data related to COVID fatalities among the unvaccinated, that means there are approximately 8-10 United employees who are alive today because of our vaccine requirement.”