United's CEO said one worker a week was dying from COVID-19 before the company mandated vaccines. Now, no vaccinated employees have died in 2 months.
- United Airlines says an average of one employee a week died from COVID-19 before vaccine mandate.
- Since enforcing a vaccine mandate, no vaccinated employee has died from COVID-19 in two months, the airline's CEO said.
More than one United Airlines employee on average was dying from COVID-19 each week prior to the company's vaccine mandate, CEO Scott Kirby said on Tuesday.
Now that a vaccine mandate is in place, the airline has not seen a COVID-19-related death among its vaccinated employees in two months, according to a memo sent by Kirby to United staff and obtained by Insider.
A spokesperson for United confirmed to Insider that the vaccine mandate went into place in September, and that "the memo references the stats before the mandate and afterwards."
It remains unclear if the data refers to all deaths that happened since the pandemic began or if it refers to a shorter time period.
Kirby also said that while nearly 3,000 United employees are currently positive for COVID-19, and there are no vaccinated employees currently in the hospital.
"In dealing with COVID, zero is the word that matters — zero deaths and zero hospitalizations for
vaccinated employees," Kirby said in the memo.
Airlines recently have been canceling flights as the highly transmissible Omicron variant has forced employees to call in sick and disrupted travel across the country.
Alaska Airlines axed about 10% of its January flight schedule due to an "unprecedented amount of sick calls while JetBlue cut roughly 1,280 flights through January 13 over COVID-related absences. Delta and SkyWest confirmed to Insider that the Omicron variant has impacted their operation and flight schedule, as well.
Kirby said in his memo that on one specific day at Newark Liberty International Airport, a United hub, one-third of the company's workforce called out sick. It was not made immediately clear when, exactly, this happened.
This story is developing. Please check back for updates.