Walmart said on Friday that fully vaccinated employees would no longer have to wear masks unless state or local rules required it. The change is effective immediately, the giant retailer said in a memo to its staff.
The retailer, in an internal memo, added that workers who work in clinical care settings like health clinics and pharmacies, with direct customer contact, will be required to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status.
The company also said that a pandemic sick-pay plan that had been in place for the past two years to cover Covid-related illnesses would end on March 31, unless it was required by state or local governments.
Additionally, daily health screens will come to an end on February 28, except for employees in California, New York, and Virginia, the company said, according to FOX News. Also, unvaccinated employees must continue to wear masks until further notice.
Walmart’s move comes after Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday that fully vaccinated operations staff at its U.S. warehouses could work without a mask starting Friday as local regulations allow, Digital Journal reported.
Walmart has about 1.6 million employees in the United States and was among the first private employers at the start of the pandemic to mandate that its workers wear masks, according to the New York Times.
The retailer did ease its mask requirement for vaccinated workers and shoppers for several months in the spring – only to reimpose the mask mandates as the coronavirus surged again.
Walmart’s latest decision has taken into account trends across the country. It came at the end of a week in which Democratic governors from Connecticut to California began to lift statewide masking policies as coronavirus cases began dropping, and it is in line with similar announcements from other companies.
