Vaccine Rollout: CA To Reserve 10% Of Doses For Teachers

CALIFORNIA — The Golden State will set aside 10 percent of its weekly vaccine allotment for teachers, school staff and childcare providers, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday. The decision was made in an effort to accelerate school reopenings and quell safety concerns.

Beginning March 1, the state will set aside about 75,000 first doses each week. The governor did not specify whether school staff would be guaranteed a second shot of the two-dose vaccines.

"We have to really, I think, think long and hard about those youngest kids that are simply just not getting educated 'on zoom,'" Newsom said on Friday from an Oakland vaccination clinic. "We can do this safely...that's why we're setting aside 75,000 every week. Plus, that grows."

The news comes on the heels of a $6.6 billion reopening proposal introduced by the California Legislature Thursday, which conditions reopening schools on counties allocating vaccines to teachers. But the governor and the Legislature were at odds on that particular promise.

"My fear about what was put out yesterday is it's actually going to slow down our ability to reopen schools safely," Newsom said Friday.

"While the Legislature’s proposal represents a step in the right direction, it doesn’t go far enough or fast enough," Newsom said in a separate statement on Thursday.

The Legislature's bill outlines a plan for elementary schools and funding for health services. There will also be money set aside to fund programs that will help students recover from the learning loss suffered by schoolchildren forced to participate in distance learning during the pandemic.

[It] must be done, and must be done much sooner than the current path we are on," Newsom said Friday of the plan to earmark vaccines for educators. "We believe this will help advance that cause."

The prospect of reopening schools amid a sluggish vaccine rollout has been a point of contention between the California governor and constituents. Prior to Friday's announcement, Newsom has been hesitant to lean reopening requirements upon the inoculation of teachers.

"The reason we can do that more formally, even though we have allowed for it over the course of the last number of weeks, is the window of visibility into the future with more vaccinations that we know are now coming from the Biden administration," Newsom said Friday.

California has finally begun to ramp up its vaccine rollout, which got off to a slow start amid a massive supply deficit. Newsom said Friday that more than 1.3 million doses would be available next week with another 1.4 million doses arriving the following week.

On Saturday, the governor tweeted that more than 7 million vaccine doses had been administered to Californians.

The state reported a total of 3,435,186 cases on Saturday, with 6,668 new cases reported Friday. The 7-day positivity rate was 3.1 percent and the 14-day positivity rate was 3.7 percent as of Saturday, a low that hasn't been seen since before December.