LA is moving towards requirement for COVID vaccines at indoor sites

Los Angeles officials on Wednesday took a step forward to require people to have at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine before venturing into indoor restaurants, bars, gyms, stores, cinemas and other venues – a measure they say would tackle the resurgence of the coronavirus.

The city council voted to ask city prosecutors to draft the law, although much of the plan remains to be worked out, including precisely where it would apply and how the new rules would be enforced. Once drafted, the bill would go back to City Council for final approval.

LA previously announced that it would require city employees to provide proof of vaccination or undergo weekly tests. He is not the only one considering such measures in the hope of mitigating the latest wave of COVID-19.

California has ordered healthcare workers statewide to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in early fall, with limited exemptions allowed for medical or religious reasons. State and school employees will need to prove they have been vaccinated, with those who remain unvaccinated going through a regimen of regular testing.

And across LA County, authorities are requiring the county’s 110,000 employees to provide proof of vaccination by Oct. 1, and are also considering the possibility of instituting their own public vaccine verification rules.

Collectively, the flurry of action points to a new front in the long-standing battle against COVID-19: a front where officials, after months of education, awareness and incentives to get more Californians to roll up their sleeves. sleeves, are more and more willing to insist on strokes to work and play.

“If we ever want to get back to normal, to what Los Angeles was like before COVID, we need to stop the spread in the places most at risk,” said Council President Nury Martinez. “So if people want to go to their gym, to go to their local bar without a mask, you have to get the vaccine. And if you want to watch a basketball game, a baseball game, go to a concert in a big hall or even go to a movie theater, you have to take a picture.

Martinez and City Councilor Mitch O’Farrell announced the city’s proposal last week, saying it would protect people in public places as cases of COVID-19 increased.

O’Farrell said it was “not a mandate to vaccinate” because no one would be forced to be vaccinated or be denied “the opportunity to access basic necessities” such as food.

“It wouldn’t be legal, it wouldn’t be moral,” he said. “But what is immoral is choosing not to get the vaccine, choosing to listen to a delusional rant on Twitter.”

As part of their 13-0 vote, council members asked city staff to gather comments from businesses on the specific types of public spaces that should be included in the ordinance, and also to meet with parents, teachers, pediatricians and child care providers to discuss how to better protect children under 12, who remain ineligible to receive the vaccine.

Businesses and groups in the restaurant industry have been open to the idea.

Jot Condie, president and CEO of the California Restaurant Assn., Said in a statement that “if asking customers for proof of vaccination in indoor public spaces can help us avoid more closures, massive layoffs and limitations in the workplace. ‘exploitation, then we will. anything we can reasonably can to help ”the effort.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, which represents more than 30,000 workers, including grocery store workers, welcomed the measure, saying its members had suffered high rates of COVID infection. 19 and other threats.

He urged the city to ensure the ordinance included a trained “health and safety officer” for each retail site.

“It’s impossible for retailers to keep the store indoors and enforce the vaccine requirement on the outside,” union president John M. Grant wrote in a letter to board members.

Some opponents have written to council members denouncing the plan as being too ambitious, including people who have called the COVID-19 pandemic a hoax or who have argued that the vaccines are harmful. Many have raised concerns about the emergency authorization for injections or have argued that the so-called breakthrough infections in people who have been vaccinated undermine the case for vaccines.

“What you are proposing is just a way to punish people who are not vaccinated,” argued one writer. “It’s absolutely unscientific and unnecessary.”

Residents who called Wednesday’s council meeting were widely opposed to the concept, with some saying they believed requiring vaccine verification to be akin to segregation and jeopardize the region’s economic recovery by eroding customer base. of some companies.

Council members, however, said controlling the transmission of coronaviruses is the surest way to avoid the kind of strict capacity or operational restrictions that businesses and sites have only recently escaped.

In LA County, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said the risk of an unvaccinated person getting infected was four times that of a fully vaccinated person. And the risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19 was 19 times higher for those who were not fully vaccinated than for those who had their vaccines.

“If you get the vaccine you have a lot of protection,” Ferrer said Tuesday. “It is very unlikely that you will even be infected. If you are infected, very few people end up in the hospital and very, very few people end up dying. “

Given the protection offered by vaccines, public health experts say getting more residents to roll up their sleeves is not only the best way to thwart California’s current push, but to protect the state as well. against future outbreaks of coronavirus.

About 63% of LA County residents have already received at least one dose and 55% are fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by The Times.

But even this relatively robust level of immunization coverage means millions of residents go unvaccinated, including all children under 12, who are not yet eligible for vaccines.

The statewide vaccination campaign only took on new urgency after the arrival of the Delta variant, which is said to be the most transmissible version of the coronavirus to date. California has seen an increase in dosing in recent weeks as coronavirus transmission picks up.

But with cases reaching levels not seen since the fall-winter wave and hospitals again facing a crush of COVID-19 patients, political leaders have increasingly turned to more aggressive action.

“Los Angeles has a responsibility to protect Angelenos. And if we are to encourage people to get vaccinated by limiting leisure time activities, so be it, ”City Councilor Paul Koretz said.

Times editor Jaclyn Cosgrove contributed to this report.