Written by Lev Finzi
The San Diego Unified School District has pushed back the date for students to get the COVID-19 vaccine until July of 2023. The District has said that they have decided on this because of the supposed effectiveness of getting vaccinated.
The rate at which students have gotten infected with COVID-19 has dropped significantly with more and more kids getting the vaccine. The board has stated that low in-school transmission has gone down at a remarkable rate since 80% of 16-year-olds or older have gotten the vaccine. The rate at which students were infected had jumped up at an alarming rate during the times of winter break, but gradually it went back down to normal levels right around the time of spring break.
Some of the strategies that had been proved to work well were testing at home and school, areas being ventilated properly, campaigns for getting students to go get vaccinated, and highly recommending masks.
Although all of the precautions had been put in place, new variants of COVID-19 have been popping up more and more frequently. This has caused the Board to look less at the vaccine as an answer to their problems. “As new variants come into existence, the original vaccines have lost a significant margin of effectiveness to prevent new infections after the first two months,” they stated.
The vaccine mandate had first been launched in September of 2021 and from there it has been moved to January of 2022, then to February, then April, and then in April, the mandate was delayed for all students.
When the mandate was first introduced in 2021, it gained massive amounts of controversy. From that point on, the board kept getting lawsuit after lawsuit, until it was postponed. Up until July of 2023, students will no longer be required to be fully vaccinated to take part in in-person school and class.
Photo Cred: NBC 7 San Diego
