Los Angeles County ended its requirement to vaccinate employees against COVID-19, allowing workers — including sheriff’s deputies and firefighters — to be hired even if they haven’t been vaccinated.
The policy change, which took effect Monday, is the latest COVID-19-related rule to be relaxed in LA County as officials continue to steadily roll out the emergency phase of their pandemic response.
“There is no longer a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for new hires or existing county employees, unless otherwise required by federal, state or local regulations or ordinances,” said Jesus Ruiz, spokesperson for the LA County Chief Executive’s Office.
According to a statement issued on behalf of Los Angeles County officials, the end of employee vaccination is “consistent with decisions to end the state of emergency by the Board of Supervisors.” The board voted unanimously to rescind that emergency declaration in late February, and the decision became official a week ago.
The Board of Supervisors also on Tuesday approved the repeal of a rule requiring certain contractors in the county to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or have received a medical or religious exemption.
However, the end of the broader requirement for employee vaccines does not mean the end of all those terms. Most healthcare workers still need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 due to federal rules governing facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid money.
LA County also still requires healthcare workers to complete their primary vaccine series and receive at least one booster dose, or else receive an exemption from their facilities. That policy will be reassessed by September, but in the meantime, “new health care workers will be required to comply with existing vaccination requirements,” county public health director Barbara Ferrer said.
The county’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate went into effect Oct. 1, 2021, more than five months after vaccines were made available to all adults in California.
The decision had a wide impact in LA County, the most populous in the country. With more than 100,000 workers on payroll, it’s Southern California’s largest employer, according to the county’s human resources department.
LA County elected officials and health officials said the vaccination mandate was appropriate when it was issued. At that time, Supervisor Janice Hahn said COVID-19 was the number one killer of law enforcement officers nationwide.
A vaccination mandate for county workers protected not only employees but the public they served, officials said. Sheriff’s deputies and firefighters, for example, routinely come into contact with vulnerable or elderly people who would be at extraordinary risk of serious illness if infected.
“If you’re tasked with supporting the most vulnerable people in the county, it makes sense for people to be fully immunized, especially during a pandemic,” Ferrer said in early 2022, as LA County emerged from the deadly winter. Omicron Surge.
Data from this time of the pandemic showed that unvaccinated people had a higher risk of infection, hospitalization and death than those who had been vaccinated.
However, the requirement was controversial, sparking backlash and warnings that it could trigger an exodus of employees. Among the critics then was Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who said in October 2021 that while he had personally been vaccinated and believed the vaccine worked, the decision should be personal. Villanueva also argued at the time that it did not make sense to impose a vaccination requirement “with the waning of the pandemic”.
In fact, the requirement came into effect just weeks before the emergence of the Omicron variant – which sent case numbers skyrocketing, overwhelmed hospitals and triggered a wave of deaths surpassed only by the devastating first winter of the pandemic.
LA County employees could seek exemptions from the vaccination requirement if they had a medical reason or “honest religious belief, practice or observance that conflicts with an individual’s ability to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. 19”.
Of a workforce of more than 100,000 employees countywide, 7,359 vaccine waiver requests have been approved. Sixty-eight workers were terminated from county employment for failing to follow immunization policy, officials said.
By the time the employee vaccination mandate went into effect, 68% of LA County residents 6 months and older had received at least one dose of the vaccine. According to the most recent data, 81% of residents in this same age group have done so. It is unclear to what extent the vaccine mandate may have contributed to increased inoculation rates.
Much has changed since the initial employee mandate was issued, including the introduction of an updated booster shot designed against the sprawling family of Omicron subvariants, plentiful supplies of anti-COVID therapeutic drugs -19 and broader immunity through vaccinations and infections. The evolution of the coronavirus has also been more stable over the past year, which means that many tools that were effective months ago remain so today.
While the effectiveness of vaccines against the infection has declined, officials note that they continue to provide strong protection against the worst health outcomes.
In January, unvaccinated Californians were 2.6 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19, and 2.9 times more likely to die from the disease than those who had received at least their primary vaccine series, according to California Department of Public Health data.
More recently, Ferrer said LA County has entered a new pandemic phase, where hospitals are no longer at risk of being overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients.
“Where we are now is unique because transmission is relatively low and hospitalizations are even lower,” she said.
Ferrer added that COVID-19 vaccines are still important.
“We had two years where vaccines proved to be effective. And we don’t really have any serious side effects that are experienced by almost everyone who gets the vaccine,” she said.
For the most recent annual period, between April 2022 and March 2023, about 145,000 US residents died from COVID-19, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In comparison, 547,000 deaths from COVID-19 were reported between April 2020 and March 2021 and around 423,000 deaths from April 2021 to March 2022.
The US death toll from COVID-19 of 1.1 million is higher than the last serious global pandemic of its kind, the influenza pandemic which began in 1918. This pandemic caused an estimated 675,000 deaths in the national scale.
