For the past eight weeks, City of Racine employees who are unvaccinated against COVID-19 have been required to be tested weekly for the novel coronavirus. Via an open records request, The Journal Times obtained testing data from the past eight weeks. No individual employee’s vaccination status was included, but the numbers of employees tested weekly by city department was provided.
While vaccination rates of city employees have increased in recent weeks, half of those forgoing the vaccine work in public safety. Firefighters and police officers still have the lowest rates of vaccination among City of Racine employees, although their vaccination rates are still higher than the general public’s. The data also revealed that the majority of the workforce was vaccinated at the time the policy took effect.
The testing policy was put in place as the number of cases of COVID remains high in the city and the rate of vaccination remained low, compared to the state and national averages.