Buttigieg said there's 'no indication' COVID-19 vaccine requirements will impact travel as deadline for TSA approaches

The TSA has said it could pursue criminal charges against passengers who assault its officers.

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• Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Sunday he didn't anticipate the federal vaccination mandate to impact travel. 
• Federal workers, including those who work for the TSA, are required to be vaccinated by Monday.
• The TSA told Insider it didn't anticipate disruptions to Thanksgiving travel because of the mandate.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Sunday he's seen "no indication" that the looming COVID-19 mandate for federal workers, which is slated to go into effect Monday, would create travel issues.

"I have seen no indication the vaccine requirements are going to impact travel in any way, certainly in terms of our ability as a federal administration to provide the services that are needed," Buttigieg said Sunday during an appearance on NBC News' "Meet the Press." 

The vaccine mandate for federal workers, which includes religious and medical exemptions but does not include a weekly testing alternative, will go into effect Monday, just three days before Thanksgiving.

The transportation secretary said about 99% of people in his department, which does not include the Transportation Security Administration, had been vaccinated for COVID-19, were in the process of getting vaccinated, or were submitting a request for an exemption to the mandate.

About 60% of workers at the TSA were vaccinated by last month, TSA Administrator David Pekoske told CNN in an October interview.

The agency told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution later in October that the number of vaccinated employees may have been greater than 60% of its workforce because some vaccinated employees hadn't yet submitted their paperwork confirming their vaccination status.

"We do not have full data to share however what I can tell you is that our compliance rate for the federal employee vaccine mandate is very high," a TSA spokesperson told Insider on Sunday.

"TSA does not anticipate that the federal employee vaccine mandate will in any way impact the agency's ability to staff for Thanksgiving travel," the spokesperson added. "We continue to work diligently to implement the vaccine requirement, including by promoting vaccination and ensuring every TSA employee is uploading their attestation information."

The TSA has 273 employees with active COVID-19 infections, according to the agency's website. Since the beginning of the pandemic, TSA has had 11,171 employees test positive for COVID-19, 32 of whom died, according to the agency.

"Let's remember what this is about fundamentally, which is ending the pandemic," Buttigieg said on Sunday. "All of us are ready to be done with this pandemic. To be done, not just with the death and the hospitalization and the grim headlines, but also to be done with the restrictions and the requirements and the masks. Putting all that behind us means getting everybody vaccinated."