The latest on the Covid-19 pandemic in the US

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is putting children in his state at risk by trying to prevent schools from requiring face masks, Andy Slavitt, former White House Covid-19 adviser, said Tuesday.

“When school districts try to do the right thing, and he overrules them, he's both overruling conservative principles of local control, but more importantly, he's putting kids at real risk,” Slavitt told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Slavitt noted that pediatric hospitals in Florida are filling up with Covid-19 patients.

“It's time for Gov. DeSantis to decide what matters. Is it kids and families or is it politics?” he said.

Asked whether President Biden should play a role in intervening in states where governors are trying to ban mask mandates in schools, Slavitt said, “the President has no choice but to put every possible option on the table.”

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown will announce new statewide indoor mask requirements at a news conference Wednesday, her office announced.

“After a year and a half of this pandemic, I know Oregonians are tired of health and safety restrictions,” Brown said in a written statement Tuesday. “This new mask requirement will not last forever, but it is a measure that can save lives right now.”

The governor also announced Tuesday that all executive branch employees in the state will be required to be vaccinated. The deadline is Oct.18, or six weeks after a vaccine receives final approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, whichever date is later.

“I am taking action to help ensure State of Oregon workplaces are safe for employees and customers alike, and I am strongly encouraging all public and private employers to follow suit by requiring vaccination for their employees,” Brown said in the written statement.

The governor does not have the power to enforce a mandate on workers in the legislative and judicial branches, but encouraged their leadership to consider one.

Employers who are pulling employees back into in-person work should have a vaccine mandate in the office, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, said Tuesday.

“I think it’s fine as long as you have a vaccine mandate. I think everybody who is going to get together in an enclosed space indoors should be vaccinated,” he said in a discussion hosted by Brown University.

Offit said, barring health reasons, there is “no good reason” to not go ahead and get vaccinated.

“There’s no good reason not to do it assuming you don't have a medical condition that precludes you getting vaccinated. There's no reason that you can get, there's no reasonable way to make that choice that you shouldn't get vaccinated. All the reasons people give are bad ones," Offit said.

The data available does not yet show a need for Covid-19 booster doses in the US, and the focus should be more on initial vaccinations than booster doses, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, said Tuesday.

“I think we will cross the line, where we know we need a booster dose, when people who are vaccinated, fully vaccinated, nonetheless, are hospitalized or in the ICU or dying,” Offit said in a conversation hosted by Brown University. “That's where the line gets crossed for me. We're not there yet. We're not and I, hopefully the CDC is carefully looking at these data because that's what you need to know.”

Offit said while San Francisco has moved forward on offering an additional dose to those who got a single Johnson & Johnson vaccine, “I don't see any evidence that you need to do that.” 

Offit also spoke briefly about the upcoming meeting of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, of which he is a member. The committee is set to meet to discuss booster doses in the immunocompromised. 

Offit said Friday’s discussion will likely conclude that immunocompromised people are the ones dependent on the “herd” of vaccinated people. 

“I mean, the worst thing an anti-vaccine person says, is they say, ‘What do you care what I do? You're vaccinated,’ which makes two incorrect assumptions. One, the vaccines are 100% effective, which is true of no vaccine, and two, that everybody can get vaccinated when they can’t.”

The San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) will require all staff to be fully vaccinated against coronavirus starting Sept. 7, the school district announced in a news release Tuesday.

The school district, the seventh-largest in the state, is giving its roughly 10,000 employees until the end of this month to submit proof of vaccination, according to the release. Unvaccinated employees will need to get tested at least once a week, the district said.

The vaccine requirement will not apply to students, the district said.

The move comes as the city sees a surge in Covid-19 infections that prompted health officials to reinstate a mask mandate in public indoor spaces.

In June, San Francisco officials announced all city employees will be required to get inoculated within 10 weeks of the US Food and Drug Administration giving final approval to a Covid-19 vaccine.

The CEOs of Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines say they will not require employees to get vaccinated, breaking with United Airlines’ mandate that workers get vaccinated by Oct. 25 or face getting fired. 

In an internal memo obtained by CNN, Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said the airline will “continue to strongly encourage” that workers get vaccinated, but the airline’s stance has not shifted. 

“Obviously, I am very concerned about the latest Delta variant, and the effect on the health and Safety of our Employees and our operation, but nothing has changed,” Kelly said. 

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian told Good Day New York on Tuesday that that 75% of its workforce has already been vaccinated even without a mandate. In May, Delta became the first major carrier to mandate that all new hires be vaccinated. 

“I think we're there's some additional steps and measures we can take to get the vaccine rates even higher, but what we're seeing is every day is those numbers continue to grow,” Bastian said.

Both announcements follow a New York Times podcast interview with American Airlines CEO Doug Parker who said the airline is incentivizing workers who get vaccinated by the end of this month with one extra day of vacation in 2022.

The average pace of new vaccinations topped 500,000 people per day for first time since June, according to data published Tuesday from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here’s more data from the CDC on vaccination efforts in the United States:

When asked about President Biden’s comments on looking into the presidential authority to intervene in states like Florida and Texas where governors are attempting to prohibit mask mandates for schools, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said federal government intervention “would be very inappropriate.”

“We believe in empowering the parents. They obviously want the government to force, and to use coercion. Our policy, based on the parents' bill of rights, is this is the parents’ decision under Florida law at this point. Now this is a new law that was just signed, it wasn't necessarily in effect last year, so we're in a situation now, where we believe that the parents’ rights will be vindicated and we'll work to make sure that that happens in any way we can,” the governor added.

Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran on Monday sent letters to the superintendents of Leon and Alachua counties, which had enacted masking policies in violation of the governor’s new rules, informing them that investigations of non-compliance had been initiated.

“Depending on the facts presented, I may recommend to the State Board of Education that the Department withhold funds in an amount equal to the salaries for the Superintendent and all the members of the School Board,” Corcoran wrote. “There is no room for error or leniency when it comes to ensuring compliance with policies that allow parents and guardians to make health and educational choices for the children.”

After the Broward County School Board voted Tuesday to maintain the school district's mask mandate originally approved on July 28, DeSantis' press secretary Christina Pushaw told CNN, “It’s safe to assume that the decision by Broward school board members to violate parents’ rights to make decisions for their own children, will result in a similar response.”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted to require all county employees to be fully vaccinated and show proof of vaccination status or undergo weekly coronavirus testing.

“In order to increase our vaccination rates, it is important that Los Angeles County have a mandatory vaccination policy for its workforce of approximately 100,000 employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19,” Supervisors Janice Hahn and Sheila Kuehl said in the motion. Exceptions will be made for medical or religious reasons. 

Contractors employed by the county may also be required to be fully vaccinated, according to the motion.

In July, the city of Los Angeles also announced it will require its employees to show proof of vaccination or get weekly Covid-19 testing. The move comes as the highly contagious Delta variant continues to cause a rise in new infections and hospitalizations in the state.

"Too many of our residents have already lost their lives to this virus, and we must do everything we can to protect their health," the supervisors said.