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California will require many health care workers, and all state employees, to get shots or tested regularly.

The move comes as officials across the country grapple with whether to mandate vaccinations to fight off coronavirus outbreaks.

California will require state employees and on-site public and private health care workers in California to be vaccinated or face at least weekly testing, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times

California will require all state employees and on-site public and private health care workers to be vaccinated or face at least weekly testing, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Monday.

“This is a requirement, to prove you’ve been vaccinated — and if you have not, you will be tested,” Mr. Newsom said.

The California move came a few hours after Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City announced a similar vaccine mandate for all municipal workers, to take effect by the time schools reopen in mid-September. Last week, Mr. de Blasio announced a vaccine requirement for public health care workers — part of an effort to speed up vaccinations as the city faces a third wave of coronavirus cases driven by the spread of the Delta variant.

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California Will Require Vaccinations or Weekly Testing for State Workers

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced that all 246,000 state employees and health care workers must get the coronavirus vaccine or face regular testing one to two times per week.

246,000 Californians are state employees, 246,000 Californians should be vaccinated. And if they’re not vaccinated, and cannot verify that they’ve been vaccinated, we are requiring that they get tested. California is committed to vaccination verification and/or testing on a weekly basis. We’re not stopping just with state employees today. We’re also announcing partnerships that include those like Kaiser — private sector, now stepping up, organizations representing physicians and dentists, dialysis clinics, stepping up. Private-sector clinics are committing to the same. And we hope this example of public and private leadership as it relates to vaccine verifications, vaccine mandates and/or mandated testing one to two times a week with also commensurate P.P.P., or rather P.P.E., obligations as it relates to protective gear — N95 respirator masks as an example — will lead to others to replicate this example, in the private sector.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced that all 246,000 state employees and health care workers must get the coronavirus vaccine or face regular testing one to two times per week.

State and local officials, businesses and residents across the country are grappling with whether vaccines should be mandated. The city of San Francisco, several Bay Area counties, the University of California and various hospital systems around the country have recently announced similar mandates.

The new requirement will apply to roughly 246,000 state employees and many more health care workers in the state, Mr. Newsom said. State departments will be expected to begin verifying the vaccination status of all state employees by Aug. 2, while the verification program for health care workers will go into effect on Aug. 9 and by no later than Aug. 23.

More than 64 percent of California residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to federal data, but the speed of inoculations has slowed. The number of virus cases in California has risen to more than 6,300 on average per day, more than double the daily average two weeks ago.

Dan Levin covers American youth for the National Desk. He was a foreign correspondent covering Canada from 2016 until 2018. From 2008 to 2015, Mr. Levin was based in Beijing, where he reported on human rights, politics and culture in China and Asia. More about Dan Levin

Shawn Hubler is a California correspondent based in Sacramento. Before joining The Times in 2020 she spent nearly two decades covering the state for The Los Angeles Times as a roving reporter, columnist and magazine writer, and shared three Pulitzer Prizes won by the paper's Metro staff.  More about Shawn Hubler

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