More than a third of the employees of Farmers & Merchants Bank in Miamisburg, Ohio, have tested positive for COVID-19 at some point during the pandemic, and CEO Shon Myers is hoping his most at-risk staff members will be part of the next group of U.S. workers in line to get the vaccine.
“Banks must remain open to meet the financial needs of our customers and society as a whole,” Myers said. “With this mindset we do believe that it would be most helpful to be able to have the option of the vaccine for at least our front-line, customer-facing employees.”
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Bank and credit union trade groups have pressed federal officials to include tellers and loan officers in that group. But the industry faces a tough reality: when their employees get a vaccine will be up to each individual state.
State health departments turned to recommendations from the CDC and the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency for determining which workers are considered essential when planning local business closures earlier this year to curb the spread of the virus. The list is said to be informing the decision on who is next in line to get vaccine doses, according to several state and federal officials.
“Current data show that many of these workers are at increased risk for getting COVID-19,” a CDC spokesperson said in a statement about the broader essential workforce. “Early vaccine access is critical not only to protect them but also to maintain the essential services they provide U.S. communities.”
While front-line bank employees made the essential workers list earlier this year, the CDC spokesperson could not speak yet to whether bank employees would be given the same priority when it comes to vaccine distribution.
The influential National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said in a report in October that “critical workers in high-risk settings — workers who are in industries essential to the functioning of society and at substantially higher risk of exposure” should be included in the second phase of a vaccine rollout.
But bank tellers, specifically, are not mentioned until a recommendation for the third phase of vaccine recipients. The paper’s authors estimate about 442,000 tellers would be included in this group.
The American Bankers Association wrote to the CDC on Dec. 10 asking for the recommended next group of vaccine recipients to include “front-line bank employees who come into contact with customers, such as tellers and loan officers.” Other workers within the industry such as traders are not included in the group’s request.
“Ultimately, states will consider the CDC recommendations and then have to make their own decisions about where to place essential workers within their vaccination phases,” an ABA spokesperson said in a statement.
A spokesman for the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions said that group, too, has been in touch with federal officials, “pressing them to support placing credit union employees at the top of the list for Phase 1b vaccine distribution.”
While banking regulators provided some input on earlier designations for bank workers as “essential workers,” there does not appear to be any such influence on when banks can get vaccines.
“Beyond the recommendations provided by [Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection] in the spring related to essential critical infrastructure workers in the financial services sector, we have not had any discussions with [the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency] or CDC about vaccine prioritization,” an administration official, who asked not to be identified, said in an email.
Just when states will make their decisions remains unclear as they scramble to get the first shots in the arms of more critical health care workers and elderly candidates first.
If some states choose to include bank employees in the next group of recipients, it’s unclear whether loan officers will be getting shots at the same time as tellers, as the industry has insisted. Jennifer Kates, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said she has “not seen anything near that level of detail at this point.”
“We are in the process of finalizing it,” a spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services said of the state’s “Phase 1b” group. “We expect to announce it soon.”
Despite the high number of cases, Farmers & Merchants has not been able to trace a single COVID-19 transmission within any of its offices. Myers said it’s a tough decision for states to determine the right priority order.
“Clearly we do not want to be in front of our first responders, health care workers or those at higher risk,” Myers said. “As this virus has lasted so long and seems to continue to spread dramatically, even though we are masking and distancing, it does create concerns of being able to keep every branch open every day.”
