COVID Vaccine To Be Mandatory For CA Students: Newsom [SURVEY]

CALIFORNIA— Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a new mandate Friday that would require students attending in-class instruction at private and public schools in California to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as soon as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gives full authorization for the vaccine's use in children.

The first of its kind nationwide, the mandate will take effect the semester after a vaccine receives full FDA approval. That could be as early as January, but it's not likely to affect students until the start of school in fall 2022 as federal officials have shown no sign of fast-tracking FDA approval of the vaccine for children. It will affect students in grades seven and up first. Any student who refuses to take the vaccine would be forced to complete an independent study course at home.

The strictest student vaccine mandate nationwide, it's likely to generate backlash as well as legal challenges. Vaccines have been available to children over the age of 12 for months, but many parents have been hesitant to get their children the shot. Religious and medical exemptions will be permitted, according to Newsom.

A requirement for students in kindergarten through sixth grade will not go into effect until a vaccine receives approval for younger children. The Pfizer vaccine is currently fully authorized for people 16 and older. But both Johnson & Johnson and Moderna vaccines have trials underway for younger vaccine recipients. Those results are expected in the coming months.

"While there continues to be encouraging signs and continuing to see progress, with more and more people who maybe were on the fence that are now getting the vaccine ... there's still a struggle to get to where we need to go, and that means we need to do more, and we need to do better," Newsom said in making the announcement at a school in San Francisco.

The mandate will also apply to all school staff as soon as it kicks in for students. School teachers and staff in the state are already required either to be vaccinated or to submit to weekly COVID-19 testing. The new mandate will eliminate the testing option.

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. Five districts in California have imposed their own requirements; those include Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest school district, which is set to take effect in January.

Newsom's plan does not override those districts' plans, saying school districts can “accelerate" the requirements.

Dr. Peter N. Bretan, president of the California Medical Association, said the organization “strongly supports” the governor's decision.

“This is not a new idea. We already require vaccines against several known deadly diseases before students can enroll in schools,” he said. “The Newsom administration is simply extending existing public health protections to cover this new disease, which has caused so much pain and suffering across our state, our nation and the entire globe over the last 18 months.”

Children 12 and older have been eligible for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine since May, and roughly 52 percent of children between the ages of 12 and 15 have received a shot. That is less than the 62 percent vaccination rate for older kids. Surveys consistently show parents are more hesitant about the vaccine, the younger the child is.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 12 million children nationwide have received at least one shot. According to the CDC, side effects of the vaccine for children may include tiredness, soreness at the site of the shot, headaches and nausea. There have been less than 400 reports of myocarditis among vaccinated children, but none have been fatal. Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle that can lead to an abnormal heartbeat. It sometimes occurs following bacterial and viral infections such as the coronavirus. According to the Mayo Clinic, it can be severe or fatal, but it usually goes away within a couple weeks without permanent complications.

There have been fewer than 300 fatal cases of the coronavirus among children in the United States. The low mortality rate among children makes the vaccine unnecessary, vaccine opponents contend.

However, young people can spread the virus, infecting more vulnerable members of their household and community.

In fact, in California's most populous county, adolescents currently have the highest infection rate of all age groups. Los Angeles County is also likely to be a harbinger of how Newsom's student mandate will play out.

Students 12 and older in the Los Angeles Unified School District face a Monday deadline to receive their first shot. If they miss the deadline, they won't be allowed to engage in extracurricular activities. Student who remain unvaccinated by Jan. 10 will no longer be allowed to attend in-person schooling in the district. The governor's mandate could have an impact on tens of thousands of vaccine holdouts in the district because parents wouldn't be able to escape L.A. Unified's mandate by transferring their children to public schools outside the district or to private schools next year.

A majority of parents in the Los Angeles school district have vaccinated their children, and the mandate has broad support as a safety measure protecting staff, students and their families.

Megan Bacigalupi, an Oakland parent and activist who pushed to reopen California's schools, told the Los Angeles Times that parents throughout the state were hoping other districts would follow suit and impose a vaccine mandate.

“But a majority of California parents just want their kids’ lives to return to normal, eliminating the need for masks and any type of quarantine,” Bacigalupi told the Times. “If vaccinating children is what gets us there, I will accept it, but not because I see COVID as a material threat to my children.”

However, here are tens of thousands of parents in the Los Angeles school district who resent the local mandate. It has garnered fierce opposition among parents who don't want to be forced to vaccinate their children, and lawsuits are anticipated.

“Hugely disappointed in this decision,” a parent of a seventh grader at Girls Academic Leadership Academy told the Times. “We will stay in school as long as we can, and then transition to home-schooling. Our daughter has said she is unwilling to be vaccinated, and in our family, we support young people’s body autonomy. ... We are not right-wing. We voted for Joe Biden. Our children have taken every other vaccine. But given how rushed this is, given how little we know long term, we are clear we will end our family’s relationship with public schools first.”

This is a developing story. Please refresh the screen for updates.

City News Service, The Associated Press and Patch editor Paige Austin contributed to this report.