Newsom Issues Nation's First COVID Vaccine Mandate For All Schoolchildren
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA/AP) — All schoolchildren, public or private, will be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19 once the FDA has given full approval of the vaccine for children 5 to 12, according to the mandate announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom Friday.
The mandate, which covers all students from elementary through high school, is the first statewide COVID vaccine mandate for children in the nation.
"The state already requires that students are vaccinated against viruses that cause measles, mumps, and rubella -- there's no reason why we shouldn't do the samme for COVID-19," Newsom said in a statement.
The government has fully approved the COVID-19 vaccine for people 16 and over but only granted an emergency authorization for anyone 12 to 15. Once federal regulators fully approve the vaccine for that group, the state will require students in seventh through 12th grades to get vaccinated in both public and private schools, Newsom's office said. The state will require vaccination for students in kindergarten through sixth grade only after the federal government has given final approval for anyone 5 to 11.
California currently has the lowest coronavirus case rates in the nation, partly thanks to the increasing number of vaccine mandates pertaining to teachers, healthcare workers, and on university campuses. A number of large companies are also requiring their employees to be vaccinated, and are adding teeth to that requirement by moving forward with firing vaccine holdouts.
In Los Angeles County — the nation's largest, with more than 10 million residents — just 1.7% of people tested for the virus have it and daily infections are down by half in the last month, when most kids went back to school.
"These numbers are amazingly low given that 3,000-plus schools are now open countywide," county Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Thursday.
She noted that though the number of outbreaks in schools has increased slightly in recent weeks, the overall number is small and largely related to youth sports.
The state's vaccine mandate would take effect the semester after the federal government grants final approval. If it comes in January, then the mandate would take effect in July.
Students would be granted religious and medical exemptions, but the rules for how the state would apply those exemptions have not been written yet. Any student who refuses to take the vaccine would be forced to complete an independent study course at home.
Until now, Newsom had left the decision on student vaccine mandates to local school districts, leading to a variety of different orders across some of the state's largest districts.
Los Angeles and Oakland Unified have mandated all students over 12 to be vaccinated, but Oakland's order has not set a deadline for when students must comply. LA set a deadline of Jan. 20.
Earlier this week, the San Diego Unified school board approved a mandate that staff and students age 16 and older be fully vaccinated by Dec. 20.
Newsom has made it a point of pride to be the first in the nation to issue a variety of pandemic-related school mandates.
In August, California became the first state in the U.S. to require all teachers and staff in K-12 public and private schools to get vaccinated or undergo weekly COVID-19 testing. Newsom also issued a school mask mandate earlier in the summer for indoor classes that applies to all teachers and students.
(© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
