(NEW YORK) — The unions representing American and Southwest airlines pilots are asking lawmakers and the White House for an exemption or an alternative to the federal mandate requiring companies with more than 100 people to get vaccinated.

Roughly 30% of American Airlines pilots are not vaccinated, according to the Allied Pilots Association, the union representing American’s 14,000 pilots. Southwest’s pilot union could not say how many of its members were unvaccinated.

“Some of APA’s members are unable to undergo vaccination for documented medical reasons, while others are reluctant to get vaccinated based upon concerns about the potential for career-ending side effects,” union president, Captain Eric Ferguson wrote in a letter to more than 15 people at the DOT, White House, and Congress.

Commercial airline pilots adhere to strict medical requirements and some pilots fear vaccine side effects like blood clots or heart problems could prevent them from maintaining a medical clearance, thus ending their careers as pilots.

The CDC reports there have been more than 200 million doses of vaccine administered already in the U.S. and serious safety problems are very uncommon.

Most side effects from COVID vaccines are mild and temporary and include things like soreness at the injection site or fatigue, headaches, chills and nausea. These side effects usually go away within a day or two.

There have been rare adverse events of blood clots — about 7 per million vaccinated women between 18 and 49 — with the J&J vaccine. Women in that age range may want to select a different vaccine.

There have been a small number of temporary heart problems associated with Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for young men. These reports are rare and the known and potential benefits of COVID-19 vaccination outweigh the known and potential risks of getting COVID — which include myocarditis or pericarditis.

The union representing Southwest’s pilot’s echoed American’s request to the federal government, saying in a statement: “Our pilots have shouldered an elevated risk of illness from the start of the pandemic, including well before the vaccines became available. And we are hopeful that our contributions are recognized and accounted for as we seek approval of an alternate means of compliance and an operationally feasible implementation period.”

Both unions say the 60-day-timeline for the requirement to get vaccinated could have a significant impact on holiday travel if pilots who choose not to get vaccinated are forced off the job.

“We are also concerned that the Executive Order’s anticipated 60-day implementation period for mandatory vaccinations could result in labor shortages and create serious operational problems for American Airlines and its peers. Airlines generate a substantial portion of their annual revenue during the holiday period, with a great many travelers depending on us to get them to their destinations. Our nation’s airlines, and the traveling public, cannot afford significant service disruptions due to labor shortages,” Ferguson wrote in the letter.

Meanwhile, United Airlines says 98.5% of its employees are now vaccinated after the company mandated the shot. At least seven United employees are suing the company to avoid getting the vaccine.

Delta Air Lines will soon charge unvaccinated employees $200 more per month for health insurance. The company says at least 82% of its employees are vaccinated.

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(NEW YORK) — All eyes are on New York as its vaccination mandate for health care workers — among the first in the nation — takes effect on Tuesday.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order just before midnight on Monday that aims to alleviate potential health care staffing shortages as the mandate takes effect. The order removes barriers and expands eligibility to allow additional health care workers to provide care.

The executive order, which also allows many out-of-state and out-of-country health care workers to practice in New York, waives re-registration fees and expedites the re-registration process for retirees looking to re-enter the workforce, and it allows practitioners to work or volunteer in certain facilities.

Moreover, it allows physician visits in nursing homes to be done using telemedicine and allows New York State-licensed providers without current registration to practice without potential penalties. It also lets recent grads in a variety of health care programs to get straight to work.

Finally, it removes barriers for EMTs to practice and assist in additional settings and allows basic EMTs to vaccinate and test for COVID-19. It also expands the scope of practice to let midwives, registered nurses, physicians and nurse practitioners to more easily administer and order COVID-19 vaccinations and tests, as well as flu vaccinations.

Hochul also said she plans to work with the federal government to look at ways to expedite visa requests for medical professionals from other countries.

Northwell Health, New York’s largest employer of health care workers with more than 74,000 staffers, said in a statement on Monday that almost 91% of its workforce had been vaccinated.

“Northwell wants to reassure the public that patient care will not be affected by the New York State’s 9/27 vaccine mandate,” the statement said. “A system-wide workforce planning taskforce is working on contingency plans to ensure that we can meet staffing needs.”

Dr. Dave A. Chokshi, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, similarly downplayed any risk of a health care worker shortage, saying at a conference Monday, “I do believe that that hospitals will be prepared to get through this, again without a major impact to patient care.”

On Tuesday, all city-run and private hospitals appeared to be operating normally. About 500 nurses for New York City Health and Hospitals were not at work, but they had been preemptively replaced.

“We anticipated there would be some losses of staff. We knew that no matter what our efforts, some people would not get vaccinated, we planned appropriately,” Health and Hospitals President Dr. Mitch Katz said at a Tuesday news conference.

The sweeping action from Hochul’s office comes as small factions of health care workers in New York are still resisting the vaccine, despite a resurgence of virus cases linked to the highly contagious delta variant.

Despite some pushback, preliminary data from Hochul’s office indicates the mandate has been effective in boosting vaccination rates. The percentage of nursing home staff who had received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose was at 92% as of Monday evening, up from 70% on Aug. 15, before to the mandate was announced. Moreover, 89% of adult care facility staff members have received at least one dose of the vaccine, up from 76% on Aug. 15.

Some 92% of hospital staff in the state had received at least one dose as of Monday evening, and 84% had been fully vaccinated as of Sept. 22 — up from 77% on Aug. 10.

“The only way we can move past this pandemic is to ensure that everyone eligible is vaccinated, and that includes those who are taking care of our vulnerable family members and loved ones,” Hochul said in a statement accompanying the executive order.

Hochul said she’s also directed an “around-the-clock operations center to assist local partners and troubleshoot staffing issues in real time.”

Workplace vaccine mandates have courted controversy for months despite assurances from public health officials that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.

The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission said employers legally can require COVID-19 vaccines to re-enter a physical workplace as long as they follow requirements to find alternative arrangements for employees unable to get vaccinated for medical reasons or because they have religious objections. Still, the mandates have spurred a handful of lawsuits across the U.S.

As of Monday, 83.7% of New Yorkers 18 or older had received at least one dose, and 75.1% were fully vaccinated. Nationally, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data indicated that 77.1% of the population ages 18 and up had received at least one dose, and 66.6% were fully vaccinated.

-ABC News’ Aaron Katersky and Matt Foster contributed to this report.

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(Az.) — One Arizona dad wants to give immunocompromised kids some of their childhood back by creating a hyper-clean space where they can safely play.

Brad Taylor’s daughter, Lily, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when she was 3 years old in December 2017. The diagnosis came after the family took Lily to the hospital for what they thought was an ear infection.

“We went into the hospital with an ear infection expecting to get some antibiotics and go home,” Taylor, 41, told “Good Morning America.” “We were told our daughter has cancer at 10 o’clock at night and by the following morning, she was in surgery. That’s how fast it changed my life.”

For the next two and a half years, Taylor said Lily underwent a treatment program that included chemotherapy and she became immunocompromised as a result.

“When Lily would go through chemotherapy, her body would go in and out of a place called neutropenia, which means you have no immune system,” he said.

According to the National Cancer Institute, leukemia is the most common cancer found in children ages 0-19. The main treatment for the disease is chemotherapy, though depending on the case, treatment can include surgery, radiation therapy, targeted therapy drugs, immunotherapy, and stem cell transplants.

“Chemotherapy is going to kill the cancer cells, but it’s also going to kill some good cells along the way,” Dr. Bijal Shah, of the Moffitt Cancer Center, told “GMA.” “For folks who are neutropenic, when those neutrophil cells are low, it sort of unlocks the barriers, so when you’re exposed to infection, it’s much more easy to succumb to that infection.”

Being immunocompromised meant the things Lily could do were heavily impacted, from playing in public spaces to interacting with people outside her home and the hospital to the food she could eat.

“We try to do a lot of things to protect our patients,” Shah said. “Normally, we tell them to avoid fruits and vegetables unless their parents can wash them at home. With meats, it has to be well done — no medium, no rares, nothing. We have to be very careful, even on a fundamental dietary level. And if anyone’s sick, you can’t be around them.”

 

How Lily’s Pad came to be
The idea for Lily’s Pad came after one particular day in Lily’s cancer journey.

“Lily had no life, so I asked the doctors, ‘We’ve watched all the YouTube videos, we’ve watched all the shows, we’ve played all the games. There’s got to be somewhere I can take her,'” Taylor recalled. “They said, ‘Why don’t you take her on a drive? That way you can at least have her in a confined area.'”

While on a drive through a quiet residential area full of nature, Taylor said they passed by what looked like a brand-new park and Lily was “begging to get out of the car” to go play in it.

“By that time, she had kind of learned the rules like we couldn’t go to public places,” he said. “She finally was at her breaking point and lost it. She was throwing shoes at me from the back, just furious that I wouldn’t stop the car. She cried herself to sleep, she was so worked up.”

The next day, Taylor began researching to see if there was a space specifically for immunocompromised kids to play in so that he could take Lily to it. When he saw that there really wasn’t anything available, he decided to make it happen himself.

“I had checked with social workers and they had never heard of anything like it,” he said. “So that’s where the concept of Lily’s Pad was born. I just wanted to give her back a piece of her childhood.”

A healing space for kids to just be kids and a resource for caregivers
One of the hardest things for Taylor, he said, was seeing Lily go to chemotherapy and then have nothing afterward for her to look forward to.

“After the hospital, what do you do?” Taylor said. “So kids have to suit up every single day to go through painful procedures and then to look forward to what? To go home? So we’re trying to give them an opportunity to mentally heal along with physically.”

In addition to the physical changes brought on by chemotherapy, Taylor noted that Lily was affected mentally and emotionally as well.

“My child went from the leader of the pack to a very shy child,” he said. “She never spoke like a child anymore. Her friends and playmates were nurses and doctors.”

On a psychosocial level, the idea of Lily’s Pad is hugely profound, according to Shah.

“When you’re getting this kind of therapy, there’s lots of changes that occur — like losing hair — and you become very conscious of it,” Shah said. “Being able to be in a particularly fun space outside of the hospital where you can interact with others who may be going through similar issues without having to think twice is amazing.”

“My daughter was the only bald one in her school, and that was devastating for her,” Taylor said. “It became a fight every day to get her to school.”

Another of Taylor’s goals for Lily’s Pad is to give caregivers a place to rest and regroup. There will be a parent lounge, marriage and grievance counseling, and information on financial resources available.

“One of the hardest things my wife and I dealt with was there’s no time when the child is not begging for your attention or comfort because they don’t feel good and they’re going through really tough times,” he said. “So this would give parents time to step away from the battle for a minute.”

To protect the immunocompromised kids that will be visiting Lily’s Pad, Taylor said he consulted the medical community on the feasibility of the space as well as safety measures needed to operate.

“We’re having an HVAC system designed right now that’s similar to a hospital so it’s got HEPA filters in it and it’s got UV cleaning in it as well,” he said.

When completed, Lily’s Pad will offer three 90-minute play sessions daily, which parents have to reserve online in advance, with a maximum of 15 kids allowed per session. Kids will be looked after by the qualified nursing students on staff. The facility will be cleaned with Decon7 in between each session, with a deep cleaning in the evening. Masks will also be required.

“We wanted to give kids back a chance to go to the park — a chance to go to a playground,” Taylor said. “My daughter is so excited to be able to open this place and point to the name on the wall and say ‘I’m Lily, and you can beat this.'”

Construction on the 5,800-square-foot space was scheduled to begin in April 2020, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Taylor now hopes to finish everything by April 2022, for the two-year anniversary of Lily’s last chemotherapy treatment.

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(WASHINGTON) — Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pushed back strongly Tuesday on recent characterizations of his phone calls to China’s top military official and denied that he had placed himself in the chain of command for nuclear launch protocols following a phone call from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“My loyalty to this nation, its people, and the Constitution hasn’t changed and will never change as long as I have a breath to give, My loyalty is absolute, and I will not turn my back on the fallen,” Milley told the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“The calls on 30 October and 8 January were coordinated before and after with Secretary Esper and Acting Secretary Miller’s staffs and the interagency,” he told the committee. “The specific purpose of the October and January calls was generated by concerning intelligence which caused us to believe the Chinese were worried about an attack on them by the U.S.

Milley’s phone calls were first made public in the new book “Peril” by the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

“I know, I am certain, that President Trump did not intend on attacking the Chinese and it was my directed responsibility by the secretary to convey that intent to the Chinese,” said Milley. “My task at that time was to de-escalate. My message again was consistent: calm, steady: De-escalate. We are not going to attack you.”

“At Secretary of Defense Esper’s direction, I made a call to General Li on 30 October. Eight people sat in the call with me, and I read out the call within 30 minutes of the call ending,” he said.

ABC News had previously reported that former Defense Secretary Mark Esper had directed Milley to contact his Chinese counterpart as part of a coordinated effort after the U.S. intelligence reports emerged suggesting China’s concerns about a military strike.

Milley added that the second call on January 8 was prompted by a Chinese request for him to call again that had been made on December 31, 2020

“Eleven people attended the call with me. Read-outs of this call were distributed to the interagency that same day,” he said. “Shortly after my call ended with General Li, I informed both Secretary of State Pompeo and White House chief of staff Meadows about the call among other topics. Soon after that, I attended a meeting with Acting Secretary Miller where I briefed him on the call.”

Milley also explained how later that day he received a call from Pelosi inquiring “about the president’s ability to launch nuclear weapons. I sought to assure her that nuclear launch is governed by a very specific and deliberate process.”

“She was concerned and made various personal references characterizing the president,” said Milley. “I explained that the president is the sole nuclear launch authority and he doesn’t launch them alone. And that I am not qualified to determine the mental health of the president of the United States.

“There are processes, protocols, and procedures in place and I repeatedly assured her there is no chance of an illegal, unauthorized, or accidental launch,” he told the committee.

After the phone call Milley said he met with key staffers “to refresh all of us on these procedures, which we practice daily at the action officer level. “

He rejected criticism of that meeting that he was placing himself in the chain of command for nuclear attack protocols.

“At no time was I attempting to change or influence the process, usurp authority, or insert myself into the chain of command, but I am expected to give my advice and ensure that the president is fully informed on military matters,” said Milley.

He told the committee that after his staff meeting he notified Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller about Pelosi’s calls.

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