Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — With mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for Executive Branch employees in place, Human Resources director, Lynn Pulou-Alaimalo gave ASG directors until this past Friday to submit vaccination reports for employees in each department, office and agency.

The governor’s Nov. 1st amendment made to the current COVID-19 Declaration makes it mandatory for all ASG employees to be fully vaccinated and Executive Branch employees were given a Dec. 15 deadline to comply with the new regulation with records submitted to DHR.

With a huge workforce in the Executive Branch, some senior ASG officials and two directors told Samoa News that the DHR director should have given departments and offices “sufficient time” to gather and document all vaccination records.

However, other senior officials in the executive branch agreed with Pulou-Alaimalo’s deadline decision saying that “the vaccination data” is needed for the task that is been given to DHR to oversee and such data “will be important for the governor and the ASG COVID-19 Task Force in making future decisions.”

In her Nov. 2nd memo to directors, Pulou-Alaimalo noted that as the “war on the deadly COVID-19 continues in the global community, the territory has been able to successfully take measures to prevent the spread of this virus onto our shores.”

As the governor slowly began opening up the borders, she said there have been a few COVID-19 cases on each recent flight — referring to Hawaiian Airlines flights from Honolulu — and the territory has been fortunate to contain what it has encountered thus far.

To support the governor’s continued protection of the people of American Samoa, “we must be able to collect data to ensure that measures that have been taken or will be taken, are the best measures moving forward in our efforts to combat this deadly disease,” the DHR director said.

Therefore, DHR asked directors of each department and agency “to verify evidence of full course vaccination against COVID-19 from their employees” and submit a report on all employees that have either taken no shot, one-shot, or both shots of COVID-19 vaccination, she said, and gave a Nov. 5th deadline — which was last week Friday — to provide the reports.

It was not immediately known over the weekend if all departments and offices were able to provide report to DHR on time.