San Mateo Daily Journal
By Julia Lee
State Sen. Josh Becker is calling for all school districts to require vaccinations for all teachers and staff before students return to school, or require all staff to be tested regularly for COVID-19.
“Now is the moment for us to create a wall of safety around our kids. That’s why I’m calling on school districts to require that the educators and their staff are fully vaccinated, or submit to very frequent COVID testing,” said Becker, D-San Mateo, at an Aug. 3 news conference at the Ravenswood Family Health Center in East Palo Alto. “We’re at a tipping point in our fight against COVID-19. The delta variant is clearly an issue. It’s clearly very contagious.”
A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control said the delta variant is about as transmissible as chicken pox with each infected person, on average, infecting eight or nine others, whereas the original strain was about two other people on average.
“If we lose another year of in-person learning, it will be 100% on us as adults,” Becker said. “The decision to get vaccinated is ultimately a personal decision. But it’s one that should be driven by science, not by politics.”