State Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) announced a bill Monday morning to add COVID-19 vaccines to the list of inoculations required in California to attend K-12 schools, a move that would nullify the mandate. from Governor Gavin Newsom last year.
“We have to make sure schools are safe so that all parents feel comfortable sending their children to school,” said Pan, a pediatrician whose legislation has tightened oversight of vaccine exemptions in previous years. “And we want to keep the campuses open.”
Pan’s legislation is the second major vaccine bill announced this year by a group of Democratic lawmakers who formed a task force last week to focus on measures to increase vaccination rates and reduce misinformation. On Thursday, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced Senate Bill 866, which would allow children ages 12 and older to opt in to vaccinations, including for COVID-19, without the consent or knowledge of parents.
Both bills are expected to face strong opposition from groups who disapprove of vaccination mandates and those who argue that children’s medical decisions should be left to parents. Legislative attempts to change school vaccination laws have previously sparked intense deliberations, lengthy protests and even arrests.
“We should be having conversations about what is best for our children and what is best for the safety of schools,” Pan said.
California currently requires students in all public and private schools to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. However, that mandate, which was announced by Newsom in October, does not go into effect until the US Food and Drug Administration fully approves the antigen for children 12 and older. Currently, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is fully approved for those 16 years of age and older, and there is an emergency authorization for children 5 to 15 years of age.
Newsom’s mandate is limited to grades seven through 12 and comes with a key caveat: Once the vaccine is fully approved, parents could still use personal beliefs not to inoculate their children. The state must offer broader personal belief exemptions for any newly required vaccines, unless it is added through a new law to the list of antigens students must receive to attend school in California. State law requires a medical exemption to skip some or all of those immunizations to attend in-person K-12 schools.
Pan’s bill will go much further than Newsom’s mandate, beginning by requiring all students in kindergarten through 12th grade to be vaccinated against COVID-19 starting Jan. 1. That requirement would be in place even if Pfizer-BioNTech remains available through emergency authorization for ages 5 to 15, though Pan said the language is “something we’re still working on.”
By adding COVID-19 vaccines to the state list of required immunizations for students, parents would need a medical exemption in order to skip those doses. Pan said issues related to COVID-19 vaccine boosters are not currently addressed in his bill.
“That is one of the things that we will have to solve,” he said.
Pan’s proposed bill would also allow the California Department of Public Health to mandate vaccines in the future without the state offering personal belief exemptions.
On Friday, Megan Reilly of the Los Angeles Unified School District and Lamont Jackson of the San Diego Unified School District urged legislative leaders to take “urgent action to enact a statewide vaccination mandate for high school students.” public schools”. Last month, a San Diego County judge struck down the COVID-19 inoculation mandate for students in the San Diego Unified School District. Facing their own litigation, LA Unified officials have postponed enforcement of their vaccination mandate until the fall.
In LA Unified, the state’s largest school district, infections remain near record levels, though rates have dropped and attendance has improved in the second week after students returned from winter break.
“The evidence clearly shows that vaccines help reduce the spread of infection, which will decrease transmission in schools and protect those who are medically vulnerable,” the superintendents wrote in a letter to legislative leaders. “The antigen will also help reduce COVID-related absences and reduce the likelihood that schools will have to be closed due to outbreaks.”
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