San Francisco has gone beyond New York City in requiring the COVID-19 vaccine in order to dine out, work out or attend indoor concerts. The city’s mandatory rule requires full vaccination, not just partial. The Associated Press has the story:
San Francisco implements strictest vaccine requirement in nation
SAN FRANCISCO — San Francisco became the first major city in the nation to require proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 on Friday for people dining inside restaurants, working out in gyms or attending indoor concerts.
Restaurants and bars posted signs and added extra staff to begin verifying people’s proof of vaccination before allowing them in.
The new rule goes beyond New York City, which requires people to be at least partially inoculated for a variety of indoor activities. Local business groups have supported the new vaccine mandate, saying it will protect their employees’ and customers’ health and keep them from having to limit capacity indoors.
The majority of 36,000 city workers say they are vaccinated, but about 4,300 have not. This week, the city sent letters recommending a 10-day suspension without pay for 20 employees in police, fire and sheriff’s departments who refused to report their vaccination status by the Aug. 12 deadline, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
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SALT LAKE CITY — The mayor of Salt Lake City has issued a mask order in the city’s schools as the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus spreads.
Mayor Erin Mendenhall said Friday that she used her emergency powers to issue the order. She says she plans to work with health officials to determine when it can be lifted.
The order comes a week after the Salt Lake County Council overturned a school mask mandate that the county’s top health official issued. Mendenhall says the majority of council members had privately told her that they feared retaliation and urged her to issue the order.
Masks were required in classrooms last year, but under a new state law, school mask mandates are now banned. Local health departments can issue a rule but only with the support from elected county leaders, and anti-mask advocates have been vocal in their opposition.
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JACKSON, MISS. — Mississippi’s only Level 1 trauma center and teaching hospital announced Friday it will mandate all employees and students to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center’s policy requires employees and students be vaccinatedi by Nov. 1.
The policy is a reversal from a previous rule put in place last month that allowed employees or students to skip the vaccine if they agreed to wear a N95 mask while on campus.
In a letter Friday, a top official at the medical center said it’s time for the institution to take aggressive action. Mississippi has the highest per capita rate of new coronavirus cases in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Those who refuse vaccination may face “corrective action up to and including termination or dismissal,” according to the letter by Dr. Alan Jones, the center’s associate vice chancellor for clinical affairs. He adds those seeking accommodations must submit requests by Sept. 10.
