Some members of Pittsburgh City Council are looking into an amendment that would change when the city’s Temporary Emergency COVID-19 Paid Sick Leave expires to when 90% of the eligible population of Pennsylvania is fully vaccinated.
As of June 11, 61.2% of Pennsylvanians aged 18 and older were fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The current ordinance, which was signed by Mayor Bill Peduto in December, stated that employees should be provided sick leave with regards to COVID-19 without the need for accrual based on the number of hours worked. The ordinance, which provides special conditions for the use of paid sick leave under the Paid Sick Leave Act, was set to end whenever the state’s or Pittsburgh’s emergency disaster declarations ended, depending on which came first.
Councilman Bobby Wilson sponsored this latest update, which was first referred to the council on June 29, 2021. The amendment is on the agenda for council’s Tuesday meeting.
The proportion of the population that needs to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to achieve herd immunity — which is protection from an infectious disease based on the fact that a high level of the population is already immune — is not currently known, according to the World Health Organization. What constitutes herd immunity tends to vary by disease. For polio, WHO indicated that 80% of the population needed to be vaccinated, while for measles it was 95%.
However, some Pittsburgh groups are skeptical of the practicality of such a high percentage.
Melissa Bova, the vice president of government affairs at the Pennsylvania Restaurant and Lodging Association, which lost a suit against the City of Pittsburgh in 2019 over the city’s Paid Sick Days Act, said that the 90% vaccination goal is “unachievable.”
She added that when the ordinance was initially put in place there were federal tax credits that employers could use to help pay for the sick leave, but those will potentially expire before the 90% vaccination rate is met.
Through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, tax credits are available for employers with fewer than 500 employees to reimburse them for providing paid sick and family leave to their employees due to COVID-19, according to the IRS.
“When the initial emergency leave was put in place it was necessary,” Ms. Bova said. “Now, we're at a place [where] businesses are trying to recover, people are getting vaccinated and we need to move on from this. To have something like this on the books that could be on for years, if we ever hit that 90% vaccination rate, is just another burden on businesses operating within the City of Pittsburgh that businesses throughout the rest of the state don't have to have.”
Amanda Schaub, the executive director of Building Owners and Managers Association of Pittsburgh, suggested potentially using another approach.
She noted that while the association supports the current ordinance and an extension to it, it recommends that the ending of the emergency sick leave be tied to a date rather than a vaccination rate.
“This recommendation is based upon the fact that the vaccine has not been mandated at the federal and or state level which allows employees to make an individual choice to get vaccinated, the state’s vaccination rate and the City of Pittsburgh’s vaccination rate vary quite a bit (Pittsburgh is more favorable) and CDC recommendations for quarantining may change in the future and should be considered if and when changes are made,” Ms. Schaub said in a statement.
Boyce Buchanan: bbuchanan@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BuchananBoyce.
First Published: July 12, 2021, 10:55 p.m.