New York: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday that public school teachers and staff will have to get vaccinated against COVID-19 to slow the pace of the highly contagious Delta variant.
An order will be issued by the city’s health department mandating that all 148,000 staff members in the largest school district of the United States to get at least one dose of a vaccine within September 27, the Mayor said.
Schools are set to reopen in New York City on September 13.
However, the Department of Education staff will no longer have the option to submit to weekly testing instead. “We want our schools to be extraordinarily safe all year long,” de Blasio was quoted as saying in a press conference by news agency Reuters.
Meanwhile, New York City’s public schools chancellor, Meisha Porter said at least 63 per cent of the employees have been vaccinated against COVID-19.
School staff in Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington state have also been ordered to get the vaccine at the earliest.
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