Newsom’s emergency pandemic declaration draws to an end. Here’s what that means for California students

As California Governor Gavin Newsom’s emergency pandemic declaration officially comes to an end later this month, the state will no longer be requiring its nearly six million students to submit to the COVID-19 vaccine as a requisite for attending school.

California became the first state in the nation to implement a vaccine mandate for school children, sparking widespread protests in October 2021 from angry parents who descended peacefully upon Sacramento to voice their concerns.

The progressive politician didn’t even wait for the FDA to fully approve the jab for children 5 years old and up before announcing his decision.

It was one of many Orwellian edicts from Newsom in a state that saw skate parks covered over with sand and small business owners lose all they had worked for during the height of the pandemic.

Nearly all of those restrictions have since been lifted, and on February 28, Newsom’s emergency declaration will be a thing of the past.

But the vaccine requirement for school children didn’t come from Newsom, it came from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), according to Fox News Digital (FND), so the lifting of the emergency declaration doesn’t impact the mandate.

In a statement emailed on Saturday morning, the department told FND that, while it won’t be adding the jab to the list of vaccinations required for school attendance, it does still “strongly recommend” everyone gets the vaccine.

“The state’s SMARTER Plan continues to provide an adequate framework to address the current COVID-19 situation, and has led to the decision to end the COVID-19 State of Emergency on February 28, 2023,” the department wrote. “As such, CDPH is not currently exploring emergency rulemaking to add COVID-19 vaccinations to the list of required school vaccinations, but we continue to strongly recommend COVID-19 immunization for students and staff to keep everyone safer in the classroom.”

“Any changes to required K-12 immunizations are properly addressed through the legislative process,” the department stated, adding that mobile vaccination services will continue to be available to any California K-12 school.

As BizPac Review previously reported, the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines in young children was a matter of concern for experts who questioned the studies that led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  to approve its use for children aged six months to five years old.

 

The efficacy of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech shots was found to be as low as 37 percent for some young children.

For teens, the FDA in June 2021 — four months before California required students to subject themselves to it as a condition of their education — added to the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines a warning after the CDC admitted there was a “likely association” between teens and young adults who received their second COVID jab and myocarditis and pericarditis, both of which involve potentially deadly inflammation around the heart.

“This is long overdue. … A lot of families have been stressed from this decision and worried about it for quite some time,” California father of three Jonathan Zachreson told The Associated Press.

Zachreson founded Reopen California Schools, a group dedicated to the opposition of many of the state’s restrictive COVID measures. In November, the activist was elected to the Roseville City School District board.

“I wish CDPH would make a bigger statement publicly or Newsom would make a public statement … to let families know and school districts know that this is no longer going to be an issue for them,” he said.

According to a lobbyist who represents most of California’s school districts, the course reversal wasn’t the result of Republican pressure, but a response to the virus’s slowing transmission rates.

“The public’s appetite for these kinds of mandates is definitely not what it used to be,” Kevin Gordon told The AP. “If you started to now impose a heavy mandate when the amount of transmission is significantly lower than it was statewide, a one-size-fits-all solution doesn’t work right now.”

Melissa Fine

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