“The governor obviously just wants a headline,” Mr. Kiley said. “We had the worst school shutdowns, we had the worst business shutdowns, and now we have the highest level of coercion and control when it comes to mandates.”
Polling indicates that California is ahead of the nation when it comes to vaccinating children. Nationally, about 48 percent of parents with children ages 12 to 17 said their child had been vaccinated as of September, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll.
But Mr. Newsom said reaching a higher level of immunity would be critical to keeping classrooms open. About 63 percent of Californians aged 12 to 17 have received at least one dose of a vaccine, compared with about 72 percent of eligible Californians overall.
The governor said he anticipated that the requirement would apply to grades seven and up starting in July 2022, in time for the next fall semester, with provisions for independent study for unvaccinated students. Rules for students with medical and other exemptions will be determined through a public rule-making process.
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- Vaccine rules. On Aug. 23, the F.D.A. granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine for people 16 and up, paving the way for mandates in both the public and private sectors. Such mandates are legally allowed and have been upheld in court challenges.
- College and universities. More than 400 colleges and universities are requiring students to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Almost all are in states that voted for President Biden.
- Schools. California became the first state to issue a vaccine mandate for all educators and has announced plans to add the Covid-19 vaccine as a requirement to attend school as early as next fall. Los Angeles already has a vaccine mandate for public school students 12 and older who are attending class in person starting Nov. 21. New York City has introduced a vaccine mandate for teachers and staff, but it has yet to take effect because of legal challenges. On Sept. 27, a federal appeals panel reversed a decision that temporarily paused that mandate.
- Hospitals and medical centers. Many hospitals and major health systems are requiring employees to get vaccinated. Mandates for health care workers in California and New York State appear to have compelled thousands of holdouts to receive shots.
- New York City. Proof of vaccination is required of workers and customers for indoor dining, gyms, performances and other indoor situations. City education staff and hospital workers must also get a vaccine.
- At the federal level. On Sept. 9, President Biden announced a vaccine mandate for the vast majority of federal workers. This mandate will apply to employees of the executive branch, including the White House and all federal agencies and members of the armed services.
- In the private sector. Mr. Biden has mandated that all companies with more than 100 workers require vaccination or weekly testing, helping propel new corporate vaccination policies. Some companies, like United Airlines and Tyson Foods, had mandates in place before Mr. Biden’s announcement.
“We want to end this pandemic. We are all exhausted by it,” said the governor, who has four children, the eldest of whom is 12. His family has had to quarantine several times during the pandemic, and days after Mr. Newsom beat back the recall, his office confirmed that two of the children had tested positive for Covid-19.
California has taken a particularly hard line on pandemic health precautions, an approach that prolonged classroom closures far beyond most of the rest of the country — in part at the behest of the state’s powerful teachers’ unions — but that also has yielded one of the nation’s lowest rates of new coronavirus cases recently.
Last month, the Los Angeles Unified School District — the second largest in the nation — became the first major school district in the country to announce a vaccine mandate for children 12 and older who attend school in person, which will be broadly effective by January.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/us/california-covid-mandate-vaccine-students.html
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