Delta drops $200 surcharge for unvaccinated employees

Delta Air Lines is ending its $200 monthly surcharge on unvaccinated employees enrolled in the company’s health care plan, CEO Ed Bastian said Wednesday.

“We’ve dropped as of this month the additional insurance surcharge given the fact that we really do believe that the pandemic has moved to a seasonal virus, and any employees that haven’t been vaccinated will not be paying extra insurance costs going forward,” Bastian said during an earnings call. 

The airline imposed the surcharge in November as a way to encourage employees to get vaccinated without mandating the shot. Delta previously said that the average hospital stay for unvaccinated workers who contracted COVID-19 cost the company roughly $50,000 per person. More than 95 percent of the company’s employees are now vaccinated.

The industry has gradually rolled back its own restrictions and is actively pushing the Biden administration to lift mask mandates and international testing requirements. 

Last month, United Airlines allowed thousands of unvaccinated employees to return to work after enforcing the strictest vaccine mandate of the big four airlines. Carriers have stressed that they need all the workers they can get amid a recent surge in demand for travel.

Those changes come as U.S. COVID-19 cases remain relatively low. However, cases are rising in the Northeast amid the spread of BA.2, a highly transmissible subvariant of the omicron strain of the virus. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the subvariant makes up nearly 90 percent of new cases.