Vaccination

Private and public employers across the country, including the city of San Jose, are requiring employees to be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has instituted similar rules for health care workers and teachers and school staffers across the state.

On Friday, San Francisco will become the first major city in the country to require full vaccination for a wide range of indoor activities, such as visiting bars, restaurants, gyms and music and sports venues. New York City is requiring proof of at least one vaccine dose for similar indoor activities, and Los Angeles is pursuing its own one-shot mandate.

Liccardo is not yet asking for a citywide mandate for indoor activities like San Francisco, though he wants San Jose officials to monitor how it affects COVID-19 case and vaccination rates and business revenue in that city and determine whether San Jose should do something similar down the road.

As of Wednesday, 80% of Santa Clara County’s eligible population had been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus — one of the highest rates in the U.S.

Still, the daily average of new COVID-19 cases reported across the county has quadrupled in the past month — from about 100 per day in mid-July to nearly 400. The case rate for unvaccinated residents is triple that of vaccinated residents, according to county data.

“Fortunately, San Jose has the highest rate of vaccination of any major U.S. city,” Liccardo wrote in his memo released Wednesday. “Yet our venues attract large audiences from around the nation, from places with far lower rates of vaccination than San Jose.

“We owe it to our workers and patrons at cityowned facilities to protect their health and safety, and we need to take every reasonable measure to encourage vaccination to halt the spread of the pandemic in a timely manner.”