Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said that in the near future, all county employees should expect that they will be required to either get the COVID-19 vaccine or undergo regular testing for the coronavirus. The county is still working out its full agreement with the unions representing workers.

“You’re going to have to be vaccinated or tested—that’s the direction we’re headed in,” Elrich said in a press conference on Wednesday. But, he added, implementation “takes time,” because people have to wait about a month in between doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine, and the county will also need to finalize its testing system for employees.

“We’ve got a loose agreement with the union representatives,” said Earl Stoddard, an acting assistant chief administrative officer. Stoddard said that they have to work out details, like the confidential medical process that employees can use to affirm that they have been vaccinated.

A vice president for the county’s police union told the Bethesda Beat that the union was not against the vaccination requirement, but that it remained a bit concerned about the logistics of how it would be implemented.

President Joe Biden has already issued new vaccination rules for federal workers. In D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser has not yet issued a vaccination mandate for city government workers, though D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine created a vaccination requirement for the 634 employees in his office, with some exemptions.

The new focus on vaccination mandates come as coronavirus cases continue to rise in the region and across the country due to the highly-transmissible Delta variant. According to Montgomery County’s COVID-19 data dashboard, the virus is in a phase of “substantial transmission in the county.” Schools in the county will require students to wear masks when they return this fall. The county council will meet on Thursday to decide whether it will reimpose an indoor mask mandate.

In a press conference on Wednesday, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said that mask-wearing would be a way of limiting other kinds of activity shutdowns.

“We’re not looking to shut things down,” said Elrich. “I’ve gotten many strange emails from people saying masking is going to lead to shutting down the schools. Everything we’re doing is to prevent us from shutting down things—it’s not leading to shutting down things.”

Vaccination rates in Montgomery County are higher than the national average. At least 84% of residents over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated, according to slides presented by county officials on Wednesday, and 94% of residents over the age of 65 are fully vaccinated.

“We have a remarkable number of people vaccinated, but even with that, Delta is finding a way to spread,” said Elrich, citing the fact that residents under age 12 are not currently eligible for the vaccine and about 100,000 adult county residents have also not gotten vaccinated.

“If you’re unvaccinated and you get COVID, you pose a risk to all those children out there under the age of 12,” added Elrich. “We do not need adults getting infected and bringing it home to their children and having those children go into the schools … people need to think about more than themselves.”