The president of the civilian Los Angeles Police Commission today called on the department’s personnel to get vaccinated, calling it “extremely dubious” that more than 2,000 of them are planning to seek religious exemptions from the city’s vaccination mandate for municipal employees.
Los Angeles County reported another 27 COVID-19 deaths today, while hospitalizations due to the virus dropped again. The 27 fatalities lifted the countywide death toll from the virus to 25,713. The county also reported 1,725 new cases, giving the county a cumulative total from throughout the pandemic of 1,435,163.
All eligible Los Angeles Unified students aged 12 and over will be required to get vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend in- person classes under a policy unanimously approved by the district’s Board of Education today, making it the largest district in the nation to impose such a mandate. LAUSD Medical Director Dr. Smita Malhotra said during a specially called meeting Thursday afternoon that based on infection and hospitalization data for children, the district — the second-largest in the nation with 600,000 students, about 220,000 of whom are eligible for the vaccine — could prevent 110 children from being hospitalized with the