California kids won't need to get COVID-19 vaccinated for school, but mobile vaccination services remain available

Per Axios

California has decided not to require children to be vaccinated to go to school for K-12 students. The decision was made as all COVID-19 restrictions for California are expected to end by Feb 8.

The report shared how the K-12 vaccine mandate was initially delayed until 2023, which saw it waiting for approval. The initial mandate was announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who wanted it to apply to public and private schoolchildren.

Implementing this mandate could have seen 6.7 million schoolchildren be required to take the COVID-19 vaccine to attend school. California was the first state to consider the situation an "endemic."

A spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health shed light on the SMARTER Plan, which is trying to provide a better framework for the pandemic. A statement to Axios was released sharing how immunization is still important, but they are not exploring emergency rulemaking decisions.

"CDPH is not currently exploring emergency rulemaking to add COVID-19 vaccinations to the list of required school vaccinations."

The CDPH said mobile vaccination services will still be available for those K-12 schools where students want to get vaccinated. A previous report shared that 71% of California kids actually had COVID-19.

Early this year, the Pentagon decided to drop the COVID-19 vaccine mandate on US troops. The push to require troops to be vaccinated saw 8,400 exits from the army, and despite the drop in the mandate, troops are still encouraged to get vaccinated.

This comes amid the news that the US likely gave $5.4 billion in potentially fraudulent COVID-19 loans and aid. The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee identified almost 70,000 questionable Social Security Numbers that could obtain loans directed toward those struggling during the pandemic.

Attorney General Merrick Garland launched the anti-fraud initiative in May 2021. The report says that fraud and identity theft happened because of insufficient anti-fraud controls.

See flow at unusualwhales.com/flow.

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