The city of San Francisco will require all 35,000 of its workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, an official confirmed in an interview Wednesday afternoon with KCBS Radio's Patti Reising and Eric Thomas.
Carol Isen, the city's director of human resources, told KCBS Radio that the policy will go into effect 10 weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration "finally approves one of the vaccinations."
Currently, the two-shot Pfizer, Moderna and one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccines are authorized on an emergency basis. Novavax is expected to file for emergency authorization on its COVID-19 vaccine in the fall.
"Our reasoning is simple: It has to do with protecting the safety and health of all of our employees, as well as the public that we serve,” Isen said Wednesday.
The city will allow for religious and medical exemptions.
Starting July 15, UCSF will require all of its faculty, staff, students and trainees on campus to be vaccinated, with similar exceptions. Isen said city officials followed the University of California campus’ lead as one of the two biggest employers in San Francisco.
"Although we are not working in concert to do this, the fact that both of our agencies have done this is going to go a long way to protecting the safety of our whole community," she said.
Isen told KCBS Radio that city officials are hopeful unions representing city employees won’t push back on the new rule. She said the city hopes to work with its employees and "focus on education and support" to help them through any mental or physical obstacles to get vaccinated.
As of Wednesday, the city said 72% of eligible residents had been fully vaccinated. Public health officials are concerned about the rapid spread of the Delta variant, which research indicates is a deadlier strain of COVID-19 that poses particular risks for unvaccinated people.
"We're quite concerned about the variants that have clearly entered the Bay Area, and the risks that are posed by those variants to our unvaccinated employees," Isen said.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, said Tuesday the Delta variant poses the "greatest threat" to curbing the spread of the virus that has killed over 600,000 Americans.
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