California will reserve 10% of doses of the Covid-19 vaccine for use by teachers and caregivers of children in an effort to resume face-to-face education, Governor Gavin Newsom announced at a news conference on Friday.
Targeted allocations will start with a baseline of 75,000 doses and this number will be kept as a minimum number to be reserved for educators each week.
Newsom credits the visibility of a three-week supply expectation set by the government to give the state the confidence to zero in on a specific subset of those eligible. In the next two weeks, the state expects to receive nearly three million doses of vaccine, which will be administered at 1,100 locations in California’s 58 counties.
As for the vaccines expected this week, some 702,000 doses have been delayed due to extreme weather conditions in other parts of the country. “Many would arrive today, no,” said Newsom. Most of these doses were from Moderna, but some doses from Pfizer were also postponed.
“It’s not the only case, my God, quite the opposite of California, some ways are likely to do a little better than many other parts of the country, but 702,000 doses have been affected,” added Newsom.
In response to the governor’s proposal to resume face-to-face learning, California lawmakers launched their own version of a plan to take children back to classrooms, which includes reaching a case rate of just seven cases per 100,000 residents, one threshold that Newsom considers very low.
His proposal suggests a return to school buildings, once the case rate is below 25 cases per 100,000 residents. Both proposals include more than $ 6 billion in funding and plan to provide personal protective equipment and aim to get younger students in grades K through second grade back into first grade, followed by those in third to sixth grades.
“We can do this, we can keep people safe,” said Newsom. “We can protect our students.”
In the meantime, California has launched new guidelines that allow children to resume competitive outdoor sports, including contact sports such as football, rugby and water polo.
The test will be required for those who play contact sports and will be limited to children aged 13 and over who live in counties with a case rate of less than 14 per 100,000. They can resume next Friday, February 26, Newsom said.