Palo Alto Online
By Lloyd Lee
State Sen. Josh Becker and East Palo Alto City Council member Antonio Lopez called on school districts to mandate vaccines for its employees during a joint press conference hosted at the Ravenswood Family Health Center on Tuesday.
"As we prepare to send our kids back to school, as my wife and I prepare to send our kids back to our public schools, now is the moment for us to create a wall of safety around our kids," Becker, D-Menlo Park, said during the morning event in East Palo Alto.
This academic year, most students are expected to return to the classroom, a move that local, state and federal health officials have urged given the learning loss as well as other health and economic burdens that come with distance learning.
But the urgency to get back inside the classroom also comes as COVID-19 cases are once again on the rise, particularly due to the more infectious delta variant. Eight Bay Area county health officers reinstated mask mandates in indoor settings starting Tuesday.
All the while, children under 12 years old are still not cleared to receive any of the available vaccines, leaving them vulnerable to the virus.