10% of vaccines will go to teachers
Newsom: ‘There’s momentum on reopening schools, and I want to continue that momentum’
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday said the state will begin setting aside 10% of its vaccines for teachers and school staff starting next month — his biggest commitment to date in the frustrating negotiations among Newsom, legislators and teachers’ unions to reopen schools closed since last March by the coronavirus pandemic.
The promise comes just a day after Democratic legislators announced their own deal — over Newsom’s objections — to open all elementary schools by mid-April, even if not all teachers are vaccinated.
Amid the jostling, troubles continued to vex California’s vaccination efforts, the latest being the storm-driven shipment delays that forced counties in the Bay Area to cancel hundreds of appointments for first and second shots
Friday. But state and federal officials insisted that the shipments are already moving again as the weather eases at shipping hubs and promised things will be back on track by next week.
The schools conundrum is less easily solved. Newsom — whose prior efforts to reopen schools have included financial incentives but no firm dates or vaccine commitments — sought to position himself Friday as a tough advocate for getting kids back in the classroom.
“There’s momentum on reopening schools, and I want to continue that momentum,” Newsom said at a news conference at a mobile vaccine clinic in Hayward.
The governor said the special allocation, slated to start March 1 with 75,000 doses, is a product of stabilizing vaccine supplies coming from the Biden administration.
Under pressure as many states across the country have long since reopened their own schools, Newsom may face a recall election in the fall driven in part by parents irked over school closures. The state’s current rules allow schools to reopen only if certain thresholds are met for controlling the virus. It is currently up to counties whether to vaccinate their teachers or prioritize other groups, such as those 65 and over; Newsom said 35 of the state’s 58 counties are currently vaccinating at least some educators.
Impatient with the progress, lawmakers in the state Assembly and Senate unveiled a new legislative deal on school reopening Thursday that would require elementary schools in counties where virus cases have fallen to offer at least some in-person instruction by April 15. It also would require counties to offer vaccines to teachers who have returned to classrooms but does not require them to have been fully vaccinated.
The proposal, which pledges $4.6 billion in funding beyond the $2 billion Newsom had promised in December with his Safe Schools for All Plan, drew praise from the California Teachers Association and six of the state’s largest urban school districts, which have criticized the governor’s approach.
But it drew scorn from parent advocates for reopening schools and from Newsom, who said it would actually slow the progress of getting kids back in the classroom. Newsom indicated Friday he would veto the legislation in its present form, which could go to a vote next week.
“I’ve made it crystal clear: I can’t support something that would delay reopening schools,” Newsom said Friday.
Newsom insisted the legislative plan would mean schools cannot reopen until counties reach lower virus case levels than called for in his plan.
Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, the principal architect of the legislative plan, declined comment Friday.
Earlier Friday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stressed that the federal agency’s own recent guidelines allow schools to reopen at any level of virus transmission in their community and at all grades.
“There are opportunities for in-person learning in all states of community spread,” Walensky said. “I’d like schools to lean in and look at what’s needed in the road map to get more children in school.”
Any reopening plan relies on ready access to vaccines, which has been stymied this week by fierce winter storms across much of the Midwest and South. Andy Slavitt, White House Senior Adviser for COVID-19 Response, said at a news conference Friday that about 6 million vaccine doses were held up but that the delay was subsiding.
In California, those shipment failures included 702,000 shots of the Moderna vaccine.
At San Mateo County-operated sites, when more than 14,000 Moderna doses did not arrive as expected, they dug into their Pfizer-BioNTech supply to fill the void. But about 75 patients who had already gotten their first Moderna dose had their second shot delayed until the doses come in or were redirected to other providers.
Shipment delays caused Alameda County to fall about 3,000 doses short of expectations, but officials said they had enough existing vaccine on hand to make up for it. Santa Clara County officials described a similar situation. Contra Costa County has not had to delay or cancel appointments at its sites, but a spokesperson said a pharmacy provider reported having to cancel 500 first-dose appointments.
At least 6.9 million vaccines have been administered to people in California. That includes 264,000 shots given on Thursday, which stands as the single-highest vaccination day to date.
This past week, 1.38 million vaccine doses were sent to California and the state is slated to get 1.4 million in the coming week and about 1.5 million in the following week, Newsom said. The supply shortages stand to improve further with the introduction of a one-shot vaccine from Johnson and Johnson, which is scheduled for emergency authorization review by the FDA next week.