Senate Republicans target Biden vaccine mandate Fauci supports

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky and Dr. Anthony Fauci defended the mandate as life-saving.

With the nation's top public health officials as their audience, Senate Republicans on Thursday aired complaints about a new wide-reaching vaccine mandate for large businesses being implemented by the Biden administration.

"I'm just telling you it's a hard sell to tell people who have had COVID that they're now under a mandate -- a mandate by the federal government -- to be vaccinated. I think you've got an extremely tough sell," Sen. Richard Burr, the top Republican on the Senate Health Committee, told the heads of the Biden White House COVID response team, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky and chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, in a hearing.

The new mandate, announced in September but finalized Thursday, will apply to nearly 100 million U.S. workers and require them to either get vaccinated or submit to weekly COVID tests. The mandate will take effect on Jan. 4, after the holidays.

Both Fauci and Walensky were supportive of the mandate, pointing to 745,000 American deaths and thousands more each week, the vast majority of which are among the unvaccinated.