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Governor Gavin Newsom announced the new emergency order on Friday during a visit to a college in San Francisco. The COVID-19 vaccine will now join a list of 10 other vaccines required for children to attend school in the state.
The governor said the state will issue the warrant in the next school term after FDA approval, the earliest being Jan. 1, 2022 and the latest being July 1, 2022.
The government has fully approved the COVID-19 vaccine for those 16 and older, but has only granted emergency clearance to anyone 12 to 15 years of age. Once federal regulators fully approve it for this group, the state will require students in Grades 7 to 12 to get vaccinated. .
California will require the COVID-19 vaccine for kindergarten to sixth graders after obtaining final federal approval for children ages 5 to 11.
“We have to do more,” Newsom said. “We want to end this pandemic. We are all exhausted from it.”
At the same time, staff members of all public schools will also need to be fully immunized. The state issued a warrant in August for teachers and school staff, but it has now ruled out the ability to undergo regular COVID-19 testing instead of getting vaccinated.
“We know there is no substitute for face-to-face instruction, but we need to do it on a consistent and lasting basis, not on an episodic basis,” Newsom said.
Students would benefit from religious and medical exemptions, but the rules for how the state would enforce them have yet to be written. Any student who refused to be vaccinated would be forced to take an independent home study course.
This isn’t the first vaccine warrant Newsom has issued in the state, but it is his first major COVID-19 prevention announcement since winning the gubernatorial recall election a few weeks ago.
California continues to have the lowest rate of COVID cases in the country. In addition to vaccination warrants issued for other sectors, including healthcare workers and state employees, California has retained its masking rules for indoor public places, including schools.
About 84% of people 12 and older in California have received at least one dose of the vaccine, one of the highest rates in the country. But Newsom said on Friday that only 63.5% of people between the ages of 12 and 17 received at least one dose.
California’s largest teachers’ unions supported the directive, as did the California Association of School Boards. Dr. Peter N. Bretah, president of the California Medical Association, said the group “strongly supports” the mandate of vaccination for students.
“This is not a new idea. We already need vaccines against several known deadly diseases before students can enroll in schools,” Bretan said. “The Newsom administration is simply extending existing public health protections to cover this new disease, which has caused so much pain and suffering in our state, our nation and the entire world over the past 18 months.”
Still, the requirement is sure to anger some vaccine-skeptical parents. Last month, more than a thousand people gathered on the California Capitol to oppose vaccination warrants.
Until now, Newsom had left the decision on student immunization mandates to local school districts, which has led to a variety of different orders in some of the state’s larger districts. In Los Angeles, a mandate to vaccinate eligible students is expected to go into effect in January for the Unified School District of Los Angeles, the second largest school district in the country.
Newsom’s plan does not replace plans for those districts, saying school districts can “speed up” the requirements.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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