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San Diego County officials on Monday called on local employers to verify that all their workers have been vaccinated against the coronavirus or require them to take a weekly COVID-19 test.
The recommendation would apply to public and private employers as well as non-profit organizations, and it is the latest step taken by local authorities to tackle a wave of infections and hospitalizations caused by the Delta variant in rapid spread of coronavirus.
But will it work?
The answer will depend on how many businesses answer the county’s call and how many unvaccinated people in San Diego among the approximately 1,400,000 people in the area.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of employers who have said, ‘You know what? A little push would help us, ”County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher said.
The county’s announcement was good news for Jerry Sanders, CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.
“I applaud the county for that. I think that makes sense, ”said Sanders, who was once mayor of the city of San Diego. “I think the fact that the county recommended this helps small employers think about doing it and helps them do it. A lot of employers probably didn’t know they could do it.”
It’s not yet clear how many companies will institute vaccine requirements for their workers, but many of San Diego’s largest employers have already done so or are planning to do so soon.
This includes the region’s 48,500 federal and 45,200 state employees. President Joe Biden and Governor Gavin Newsom have previously issued warrants for federal and state workers, respectively. Newsom’s mandate also extends to healthcare workers, nearly 160,000 of whom work in San Diego County, according to the San Diego Workforce Partnership.
In mid-September, the Defense Ministry will require all members of the military to be vaccinated. This includes approximately 110,000 local soldiers on active duty. And UC San Diego will require all staff, students and faculty to be vaccinated by September 6. The university employs nearly 36,000 people, including its health system.
The county, the region’s fifth-largest employer, is demanding that 18,000 of its workers prove they are vaccinated or agree to undergo weekly testing and indoor masking starting Aug. 23. Fletcher said disciplinary action will be taken against those who fail to do so. comply, but added that the county is still investigating whether employees who refuse to be vaccinated or tested would be made redundant.
Other large employers, such as San Diego Gas & Electric and Qualcomm, have not issued a warrant, according to spokespersons for the two companies.
Of the 2.8 million San Diego currently eligible for a coronavirus vaccine, about 2.3 million have received at least one dose while the remaining 500,000 have yet to receive their vaccine.
Local officials cite recent data as a good reason why they should do so. In the past 30 days, people who are not fully immunized accounted for 92% of new infections and 98% of hospitalizations. This includes 13 hospitalizations among those fully vaccinated and 521 among everyone from mid-July to mid-August.
Cases in the region have continued to increase since July 4. As of mid-July, San Diego was seeing 200 to 300 new infections per day, but on Monday, the county reported 1,095 new cases of the coronavirus. It has become the norm these days.
The number of San Diego in hospital with COVID-19 has also increased from around 100 to 500 over the past month.
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” said Dr Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health official. “But the way out is for people to get vaccinated.”
The situation is still much better than during the winter wave, when the county reported as many as 4,000 or more new cases per day in January and there were more than 1,800 San Diego in hospital with COVID-19. But while local authorities don’t anticipate a return to those levels, emergency services in the region are already struggling to deal with an influx of non-COVID patients.
At this time, the county is not forcing companies to mandate workplace vaccinations and does not issue a vaccination warrant to the public. Instead, local authorities continue to recommend that everyone eligible for the vaccine should do so.
It’s a move that mimics the county’s stance on masking, where it has asked all residents of San Diegan to mask themselves indoors regardless of vaccination status without requiring residents to do so.
This makes San Diego’s masking and vaccination policies less stringent than those of Los Angeles County and San Francisco, respectively, with the latter requiring those who enter restaurants, bars and other indoor public spaces to show proof that they were fully vaccinated as of Friday.
When asked if the county would consider masking or vaccination warrants in the future – and what would trigger such a change – Fletcher repeatedly declined to provide a straightforward answer. He also wouldn’t say if the county has the power to pass more stringent measures, although other counties in California clearly do.
“We’re not going to speculate on what’s to come,” Fletcher said. “We’re doing what we can with what we have right now. “
The county’s silence on the extent of its own authority surprised Dan Eaton, a legal ethics expert and local lawyer. He cites a 1905 Supreme Court case as a precedent. In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the court ruled that the state of Massachusetts could allow cities to adopt smallpox vaccination warrants, and that this did not violate the constitutional rights of citizens.
“As long as this matter remains a good law, yes, at least state and local governments have the authority,” Eaton said. “There is a question about its durability. Because, for example, it does not fully take into account the evolution of the law, accommodating the religious (exemptions) and so on.
He says it’s a little less clear whether the county would have the power to specifically require employers to make vaccination mandatory rather than issuing a general vaccine requirement for the region. This is because the state’s division of occupational safety and health, also known as Cal / OSHA, sets California labor standards.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons the county insisted on a recommendation rather than a mandate. But Virginia Morrison, president of the San Diego Brewers Guild, believes a soft recommendation doesn’t do enough to protect employers while raising legal and logistical questions. She would like government officials to take urgent action to protect employers who mandate vaccinations from legal action.
“It’s just a little frustrating that they are doing these things and not providing the protections employers need to take action,” said Morrison, who is also an employment lawyer.
According to her, the county’s recommendation is essentially to ask companies to take responsibility for vaccinating more people.
“We can’t really get people to do what we think they should be doing, so we’re going to ask you to do it on our behalf,” Morrison said. “It’s a difficult position to occupy for any employer, but especially as a small one. “
County spokespersons also told the Union-Tribune on Monday that immunocompromised San Diegans are now eligible for a third dose of Pfizer’s Moderna vaccine. The move comes after the FDA and CDC cleared third injections for people with health conditions that could prevent them from developing a strong immune response to the first two shots of the vaccine.
Spokesmen Mike Workman and Tim McClain said residents of San Diegan will be able to self-certify that they have an illness that qualifies them for a third dose. About 2 to 3 percent of American adults are immunocompromised, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This includes people with autoimmune diseases, organ transplant recipients, and those undergoing chemotherapy.
UT reporters Phillip Molnar and Rob Nikolewski contributed reporting.
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