OAKLAND, Calif. — California will require teachers and school staff to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or to submit to regular testing as children begin to return to classrooms while the delta variant continues to fuel new infections nationwide.
Speaking at a news conference in Oakland on Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said vaccinations will be required for all school staff including teachers, para-educators, custodial staff, bus drivers and others. People who decline to get vaccinated will need to submit to once-weekly testing, he said.
“We think this is the right thing to do and we think this is a sustainable way to keeping our schools open and to address the No. 1 anxiety that parents like myself have – I have four young children – and that is knowing that the schools are doing everything in their power to keep our kids safe, to keep our kids healthy,” the governor said.
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School staff will be required to get fully vaccinated by Oct. 15, according to a public health order issued Wednesday by the California Department of Public Health.
The order makes California the first state to mandate vaccinations for school employees. Previously, officials announced state employees and health care workers would be required to get vaccinated.
“Educators want to be in classrooms with their students, and the best way to make sure that happens is for everyone who is medically eligible to be vaccinated, (along with) with robust testing and multi-tiered safety measures,” California Teachers Association President E. Toby Boyd said in a news release. “Today’s announcement is an appropriate next step to ensure the safety of our school communities and to protect our youngest learners under 12 who are not yet vaccine eligible from this highly contagious Delta variant.”
California health officials noted in their public health order that the state is now seeing “the fastest increase in COVID-19 cases during the entire pandemic” with a majority of cases stemming from the highly transmissible delta variant.
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More than 3.9 million COVID-19 cases have been reported across California since the start of the pandemic, resulting in nearly 64,000 deaths, according to state health officials. Nationwide, over 36.1 million cases and 618,000 deaths have been reported, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University.
“Combining this policy with mitigation measures like masking, hand washing, and good ventilation will ensure we are doing everything possible to keep schools safe for in-person learning,” California Federation of Teachers President Jeff Freitas said in a statement.
As of Tuesday, 63% of Californians aged 12 and older were fully vaccinated, officials said. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows about 59% of Americans over 12 years old have been fully vaccinated so far nationwide.
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