Returning to the workplace depends upon whether or not staff are vaccinated, says Dr. Celine Gounder

Dr. Celine Gounder, an epidemiologist who advised the Biden government, highlighted the importance of a vaccinated workforce as employers consider returning to the office.

“If you are able to vaccinate your workforce, I think that is a very different calculation than if you are not,” Gounder said Monday evening in an interview on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” . “Vaccination is the way out of this pandemic.”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday issued a vaccination mandate for the 68,000 transit workers who operate the city’s vast subway and bus system. Workers must either be vaccinated or have weekly tests starting on the day of work. He also suggested that private businesses like bars and restaurants require proof of vaccination against Covid-19 as a prerequisite for approval. The announcement comes less than a week after the governor issued the same requirement for all civil servants.

Host Shepard Smith also asked Gounder about the rise in delta variant cases in children and whether or not they affected differently from other variants. The NYU epidemiologist stated that the Delta variant is different and therefore affects children more.

“The virus concentration in infected people is 1,000 times higher in the nose and throat than in the early strains of the virus,” said Gounder. “So if you imagine that there are so many more viruses in the body, even if a child might not have had a serious infection at the beginning of the pandemic, now with so many more viruses we are seeing children getting sick.”