90 days after Gov. Gavin Newsom required state workers to be completely vaccinated against COVID-19 or go through week by week testing, his vow that California government would show others how its done has not been satisfied: Many public agencies face low vaccination rates, and most state-run working environments have neglected to test unvaccinated employees.
At the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, for instance, less than 33% of employees have given evidence they are completely vaccinated, while 6,700 employees are either not vaccinated or have declined to give their status. Cal Fire said it is trying only 75 employees.
The Department of Motor Vehicles, where 59% of employees are completely vaccinated, has around 3,600 unvaccinated staff members working in workplaces across the state who are needed to be tried week after week. However, just 411 of them are being tried, a DMV representative said.
A few departments have neglected to report vaccination rates or testing data by and large, yet the California Department of Human Resources said the information it has gotten show that generally 50% of 59,000 unvaccinated state employees were tried as needed during the main seven day stretch of October.