President Joe Biden took a gamble when launching a sweeping executive order calling on large employers to require COVID vaccinations in their workforce or test for the virus weekly. One month later and industry leaders are expressing their support of the president’s vaccination agenda.

C-suite executives across the nation’s biggest businesses continue to fret about COVID-19 presenting the most urgent existential risk to their operations, according to a CNBC survey of chief financial officers. Asked about their position on Biden’s Sept. 9 executive order, 80% of polled CFOs said they “totally support”’ the mandate and have moved toward complying with it.

Biden’s support from the business community helps dull the resistance presented by his Republican rivals, some of whom have condemned his actions as an overreach of his presidential powers. Several Republican governors have threatened the administration with lawsuits, but the president has not been dissuaded from his decision.

On Thursday, Biden was back on the road in Chicago where he focused on touting the importance of getting vaccinated and the work of his administration to achieve this.

“There is no other way to beat the pandemic than to get the vast majority of the American people vaccinated,” Biden said at an event outside Chicago during his trip, the Associated Press reports.

Also present with President Biden was United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby. United initiated a vaccine mandate prior to Biden's own when it urged its 67,000 U.S. employees in June to get vaccinated or risk losing their jobs. The company says noncompliance has been minimal since it was enacted.

Other large employers have also joined in asking their employees to vaccinate to bring their companies in line with Biden’s order.

IBM announced this week that due to its status as a federal contractor, it would be initiating a vaccine mandate of its own. It threatened employees with unpaid leave if they did not comply. Late last month, automaker Ford also said that it would be starting a vaccine mandate and is currently in talks with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union to implement it.

Biden’s executive order is estimated to impact up to 100 million workers, or a third of the nation’s workforce, according to the White House. A new rule is also on the way to help guide employers initiating vaccine mandates from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

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