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| Photo: John Disney/ALM |
Alston & Bird is now one of the latest employers to be sued for allegedly firing an employee for not complying with COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Alston, an Am Law 100 firm with about 1,600 employees worldwide, on Wednesday asked that a September lawsuit filed by former legal assistant Joanne Halvorson in Gwinnett County Superior Court be moved to the Atlanta Division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
The firm is the latest to be hit with lawsuits related to religious objections to COVID-19 vaccinations that some employers required in response to the pandemic that began in March 2020. Other Southeast employers sued this year over vaccine mandates have included financial services company TIAA-CREF, clothing-maker Hanes and food company J.M. Smucker, according to Law.com Radar’s reports of federal court documents.
Halvorson is a Bethlehem, Georgia, resident who now works for another Atlanta-area law firm, 18-attorney civil and criminal litigation firm Poole Huffman, according to her LinkedIn page. She filed her original complaint in Gwinnett County on Sept. 15, alleging discrimination based on age, sex, religion, disability and other factors that violated federal laws.
The filing was done more than a year and a half after her December 2021 termination—within the two-year statute of limitations on tort claims in Georgia, according to state law.
She said she is over the age of 40 and alleges age discrimination led to her termination from a $92,000-a-year position on Dec. 31, 2021. But she also says the firm—where she worked for three years—fired her because she refused to comply with a COVID-19 vaccination mandate despite her religious objection to it. --->READ MORE HERE
For people suffering through a bout of COVID-19, the antiviral Paxlovid has been a godsend.
The medication emerged as the go-to antiviral treatment during the pandemic after the Food and Drug Administration granted it emergency-use authorization in December 2021.
Now, there’s a new antiviral that’s superior to Paxlovid — but Americans can’t get it, as it’s being held up in the lengthy FDA-approval process.
Ensitrelvir, marketed as Xocova in Japan — the only country where it’s legally available — has several advantages over Paxlovid.
However, experts lament that the newer, better drug probably won’t be available in the US until the end of 2024.
The FDA seems to be “slow walking” the approval process for ensitrelvir, infectious disease specialist Dr. David Boulware, a professor medicine at the University of Minnesota, told the Atlantic.
And because the COVID-19 emergency was declared over in May of this year, ensitrelvir probably won’t be granted the same emergency-use authorization that Paxlovid received.
Nonetheless, the FDA has granted the new drug “fast-track” status, meaning its review process will be expedited once the drug’s manufacturer, Shionogi of Osaka, Japan, submits the required documentation. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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