Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas said Sunday a vaccination rate just below 40% is “painfully low” and that officials are now considering “compulsion” of city workers.
In an interview with CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” Lucas said requiring vaccinations should be an “important step” in other places as well.
“In terms of compulsion, we are giving more consideration to requiring all of our 5,000 city employees to be vaccinated,” he declared.
“I think that is something. I do encourage more American businesses, more American local and state governments to consider that as an important step for how we can show how important it is to our jurisdictions.”
According to Lucas, outreach to the unvaccinated is also being geared to “populations that haven’t needed to heart that message.”
“They're painfully low,” he said of vaccination rates in the city, adding that 97% of the cases in the city’s hospitals are from those who aren’t vaccinated.
“We need to make sure that we're reaching out to young people. Young men of color is a place where we have incredible weakness right now,” he said. “That's why we're not only being as creative as possible in how we reach out through traditional media, but also concerts. We'll be appearing and giving away tickets at hip hop concerts, country music concerts, any number of things that say to people that the vaccine is around, the vaccine is safe and it's important for you to take.”
“What we're really trying to say is it is safe. This is not compulsion. This is instead something that's important for yourself and your family,” he added.
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Fran Beyer ✉
Fran Beyer is a writer with Newsmax and covers national politics.
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