San Diego Unified Backs Off Vaccine Mandate; Cites Effectiveness

By Scott Lewis, the Voice of San Diego

May 25, 2022

San Diego Unified’s Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to delay mandating COVID-19 vaccines for students until July 2023.

The district’s staff made a presentation explaining that students have already been vaccinated at a high rate and the danger is waning.

“There is limited evidence of widespread classroom transmission of the virus, especially with current ventilation safeguards remaining in place and with encouragement to voluntarily wear masks indoors,” the presentation reads. You can see their slides here.

The district is also a bit less impressed with the vaccines.

“As new variants come into existence, the original vaccines have lost a significant margin of effectiveness to prevent new infections after the first two months,” they wrote.

The mandate was intensely controversial when first approved by the board in 2021. Since then, lawsuits have bogged it down and the state decided to postpone its own insistence that all students be vaccinated before attending in-person classes.

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