California Teachers Should Get Vaccinated or Tested for COVID-19 Every Week

California becomes the first state in the country to announce a vaccine mandate that applies to teaching staff at the start of the school year

California will become the first state in the country to require its K-12 teachers and school sector workers to be vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 each week.

The announcement was made by Gov. Gavin Newsom at an Oakland school, which has already returned to face-to-face classes after the summer break.

Classes will resume in the next few days in other locations in California.

“We believe this is the right thing to do and we believe it is a sustainable way to keep our schools open and to address the number one anxiety that parents, like me, have for children,” Newsom said.

This ordinance for school personnel goes into effect on August 12, and California schools must comply with the rule by October 15, 2021.

Related: Wave of COVID-19 Infections Reaches School Population in the Bay Area

California becomes the first entity to take such a measure at a time when the state has registered an increase in the number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths due to the coronavirus in recent weeks.

Newsom had issued a similar ordinance days ago for the state’s municipal workers, as well as medical personnel.

The Oakland Unified School District announced Tuesday night its own immunization mandate for teaching staff . Hours earlier, the San Francisco School District had made a similar order.

Schools in California are returning to face-to-face activities, which increases concern about possible infections in the presence of the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has greater transmission power .

Last week, in Contra Costa County, the districts of Brentwood and Oakley resumed activities, and within days there were already infections among students and teachers.

In the town of Brentwood, they increased from 10 confirmed cases to 19 as of this Tuesday, and at least 117 students and four staff members began to present symptoms of COVID, but so far they had not tested positive for coronavirus.