TAMPA, Fla. – The law is on the side of public health officials when it comes time to getting everyone vaccinated, which means even companies could mandate their employees to get inoculated.

What You Need To Know

  • USF Health Professor says companies may be able to mandate employee vaccination program

  • Supreme Court has sided with health officials during a public health emergency

  • Dr. Wolfson says public trust of health officials must improve before mass Covid-19 vaccine deployment

  • More Coronavirus headlines

As we near the announcement of a coronavirus vaccine, health officials and lawmakers--from local to federal level-- will have to grapple with convincing the public to get immunized.

What about corporations?  Can companies mandate their employees getting a vaccine?

Dr. Jay Wolfson, Senior Associate Dean at the University of South Florida’s Morsani College of Medicine said they can.

Dr. Wolfson, who’s also a lawyer and a professor of public health, knows the history of vaccines and how the government has deployed them.

Florida is a “Right to work state.”

"So in most cases, private companies have the prerogative to require certain health measurements to their employees,” said Dr. Wolfson.  “When it comes to the safety of the workplace among employees, employers have a tremendous amount of discretion. So most legal scholars think that employers can easily mandate but they also have to consider people who have special issues with disabilities or special religious concerns. If they have disabilities that preclude them from taking the vaccine, then reasonable accommodations should be made."

For public organizations such as government jobs, schools and first responders, Dr. Wolfson said it would require some kind of executive action from county commissions or even the governor.

Religious exemptions are not as strong an argument to avoid vaccination as in the past said Dr. Wolfson.

Although, history says the law is on the side of public health, a study done after the H1N1 pandemic shows a very conflicted path to get mass vaccination done.

Lawsuits sprang up and people rejected taking the developed flu vaccine back then, causing millions of doses go to waste.

The Supreme Court upheld in 1905 laws penalizing people who refused vaccination during a public health emergency.

In 1922, the high court again upheld a state law requiring children be vaccinated to go to school, while keeping accommodations in mind.

Dr. Wolfson said one famous mandate might have helped win the Revolutionary War.

In 1777, General Washington at the time mandated all troops get vaccinated against small pox.