By PTI
LOS ANGELES: Yoga studio owner David Gross felt relieved after Los Angeles passed a vaccine mandate that is among the strictest in the country, a measure taking effect Monday that requires proof of shots for everyone entering a wide variety of businesses from restaurants to shopping malls and theatres to nail and hair salons.
For Gross, the relief came from knowing he and his co-owner don’t have to unilaterally decide whether to verify their customers are vaccinated.
In another part of town, the manager of a struggling nail salon feels trepidation and expects to lose customers.
“This is going to be hard for us,” Lucila Vazquez said.
Los Angeles is among a growing number of cities across the US, including San Francisco and New York City, requiring people show proof of vaccination to enter various types of businesses and venues.
But rules in the nation’s second-most-populous city, called SafePassLA, apply to more types of businesses and other indoor locations including museums and convention centres.
They are being implemented as new cases have started inching up following a sharp decline from an August peak driven by the delta variant.
This was the time of year in 2020 when the worst spike of the pandemic was just beginning in California, which by January saw an average of 500 people die every day.
Los Angeles became the state’s epicentre and its hospitals were so overloaded with patients that ambulances idled outside with people struggling to breathe, waiting for beds to open.
So many people died that morgues reached capacity and refrigerated trucks were brought in to handle the overflow.
That stark scene played out as coronavirus vaccines arrived and California and Los Angeles moved aggressively to inoculate people.
Among LA county’s roughly 10 million people, 80 per cent of eligible residents now have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose and 71 per cent of those eligible are fully vaccinated, according to public health officials.
To guard against anything resembling the January carnage, the LA City Council voted 11-2 last month for the ordinance that requires people 12 and older to be fully vaccinated to enter indoor public spaces including sports arenas, museums, spas, indoor city facilities and other locations.
Negative coronavirus tests within 72 hours of entry to those establishments would be required for people with religious or medical exemptions for vaccinations.
Customers without proof can still use outdoor facilities and can briefly enter a business to use a restroom or pick up a food order.
While the order takes effect Monday, city officials say they won’t start enforcing it until Nov.29 to give businesses time to adjust.
A first offense will bring a warning but subsequent ones could produce fines running from $1,000 to $5,000.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who tested positive for the coronavirus last week while attending the United Nations climate change conference in Scotland, said the mandate will encourage more people to get shots and make businesses safer for employees and customers.
“Vaccinating more Angelenos is our only way out of this pandemic, and we must do everything in our power to keep pushing those numbers up,” Garcetti said.
Business trade groups say the mandate will sow confusion because Los Angeles County’s own vaccine rules, which apply to dozens of surrounding communities, are less sweeping.
Cities are allowed to pass rules more stringent than the county’s.
“There’s a tremendous lack of clarity,” said Sarah Wiltfong, senior policy manager at the Los Angeles County Business Federation.
For example, most retail shops are exempt.
“But shopping malls and shopping centres are included, which of course includes retail shops,” she said.
Harassment of workers who are tasked with verifying vaccination is the top concern of the business federation’s members, Wiltfong said.
“This puts employees in a potential position of conflict, when they’re not necessarily trained to handle situations like that,” she said.
Salons were especially hard hit during the pandemic and were among the last businesses to reopen indoors.
Before COVID, Lynda Nail Salon in the Los Feliz neighbourhood was regularly filled with clients for hair and nail appointments.
On Wednesday morning, only one woman waited for her hair to set.
Vazquez, who manages the business, said she will follow the new rules even though many of her hair clients have said they won’t come in if it requires being vaccinated.
Gyms and yoga studio like the one co-owned by Gross also fall under the order.
He doesn’t relish having his employees play the role of enforcer, checking every customer’s vaccination status.
But now that the rule is on the books, it’s one less decision he and his partner Lydia Stone have to make as they navigate Highland Park Yoga back to in-person classes.
In anticipation of the new rules, the studio last month started encouraging its regular customers to submit their vaccine cards online so they don’t have to show them at the start of every class.
Gross and Stone said it would be heartbreaking to turn away anyone.
“You know, the City Council decided, the mayor signed it, and we we have no choice but to comply with the law,” Gross said, adding that the possibility of being punished for violating the law would be hugely detrimental” to a yoga business that is barely surviving after being shut down for the bulk of the pandemic.
With the approval of the COVID-19 vaccine for younger children, many elementary schools around the US are preparing to offer the shots, which educators see as key to keeping students learning in person and making the classroom experience closer to what it once was.
Some district leaders say offering vaccine clinics on campus, with the involvement of trusted school staff, is key to improving access and helping overcome hesitancy, particularly in communities with low overall vaccination rates.
Still, many school systems are choosing not to offer elementary schools as hosts for vaccination sites after some middle and high schools that offered shots received pushback.
More than 250 families signed up for vaccinations that began Thursday at elementary schools in Duluth, Minnesota, which organised clinics immediately after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the final signoff to Pfizer’s kid-size COVID-19 shot for children ages 5 to 11.
Superintendent John Magas called the vaccines a “game changer.”
“This brings us one step closer to moving from pandemic to endemic,” Magas said.
“It allows us to reconsider things like social distancing and masking and things like that as safety permits.”
The Biden administration plans to send a letter to U.S. elementary schools in the next week asking them to host clinics.
The Education Department is also urging schools to host town halls and webinars at which parents can talk to doctors about the vaccine.
Districts that have held or are planning clinics for younger children span Alaska to Vermont, said Hayley Meadvin, an Education Department senior adviser.
Where schools choose not to host clinics, families can turn to doctor’s offices, hospitals and other sites.
“There are many points of access, and there’s no wrong door, honestly,” Meadvin said.
In Ohio, some school districts offered on-site clinics for older students, but Rick Lewis, director of the Ohio School Boards Association, said they haven’t heard from any districts planning them for younger students.
He noted the CDC encourages districts to consider factors like local needs for school clinics and adequate community support.
School vaccine drives have faced pushback and protests in Ohio and elsewhere, and some opponents say they plan to keep up pressure as the focus of the vaccination effort shifts to younger students.
Sarah Kenney, who represents the group Mainers for Health and Parental Rights, argues that schools should not be getting involved or even talking to young children about the vaccine.
She worries about its newness and potential for long-term side effects.
A Pfizer study of 2,268 children found the vaccine was almost 91% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infections.
The FDA examined 3,100 vaccinated kids in concluding the shots are safe.
Kenney also expressed concern about stigma against children who do not get vaccinated.
“These conversations and personal decisions have been difficult enough to navigate for adults, we shouldn’t be putting this on our kids,” she said.
Parents are required to give authorization for their children’s shots.
The vaccines are typically administered before or after school in partnerships with local hospitals and government health officials.
Chicago Public Schools, the country’s third-largest district, canceled school Nov.12 to give parents an opportunity to get their children vaccinated by a healthcare provider or at a school-based site.
In Portland, Oregon, vaccines will be offered in eight elementary schools starting next week in high poverty districts, where families are more likely to face barriers such as access to health care or transportation, Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero said.
On the heels of California’s decision to make vaccines for children mandatory, Portland is among districts considering the same.
A recent board of education meeting to discuss that possibility was disrupted by a group of protesters.
For that reason, security will be present at the vaccine clinics, and their times and dates won’t be publicized outside the local community, said Courtney Westling, the district’s director of government relations.
“Schools are a trusted community hub,” she said.
“Families, in general, feel very safe at these school sites. We’re also not asking for identification or insurance cards. We don’t want people to fear ICE showing up or something. We are just trying to get people vaccinated so we can get some of this behind us and get back to some semblance of normalcy.”
In Hartford, Connecticut, schools superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez said the vaccination clinics it is planning along with local hospitals will include school nurses, trusted by families.
Only a third of the district’s students 12 and older are vaccinated.
“We take an equity stance here and think about the access and removing any barriers that our families might have,” she said.
In nearby Tolland, Connecticut, school superintendent Walter Willett said his district also is teaming with health providers, including UConn Health, to offer vaccines at school sites to younger students.
He said vaccines are important, not just for keeping kids in school, but for teachers, janitors and other staff who tend to be more at risk.
“They can more effectively do their job when kids aren’t bouncing in and out of the classroom in quarantine,” he said.
Liz Hamel, the vice president of opinion and survey research at KFF, a nonprofit that studies health care issues, said their recent surveys show parents are more likely to accept vaccine information from their pediatrician than from government or educational sources.
“And one thing we found with teens is that most parents didn’t want their school to require the vaccine, but if their school provided information or encouraged students to get vaccinated, those parents were more likely to say that their child was getting the vaccine,” she said.
Sam Valle, a 9-year-old in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, said he’s been bugging his parents for months, asking when he can get the vaccine.
“Right now, I can’t go into a restaurant without it,” he said.
“I can’t go into a store without wearing a mask. I can’t do a lot of things.”
Sam’s quest will soon be over.
His mother says his shot is now scheduled for Wednesday.
