Los Angeles County has removed the COVID-19 vaccination requirement for employees, allowing workers, including deputies and firefighters, to be hired even if they haven’t been vaccinated.

The policy change, effective Monday, is the latest COVID-19-related rule to be relaxed in Los Angeles County as officials continue to steadily wind down the emergency phase of their pandemic response.

“There is no longer a requirement to vaccinate against COVID-19 for new employees or existing district employees. unless otherwise provided by federal, state or local regulations or orders,” said Jesús Ruiz, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Executive Directorate.

According to a statement released on behalf of Los Angeles County officials, the lifting of the requirement to vaccinate employees “is consistent with the decisions of the Board of Supervisors to end the state of emergency.” The board voted unanimously to lift the state of emergency at the end of February, and the move became official a week ago.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday also approved the lifting of a rule requiring certain county contractors to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or receive a medical or religious exemption.

However, the end of the broader requirement to vaccinate employees does not mean the end of all such mandates. Most health care workers are still required to get vaccinated against COVID-19 due to federal regulations regarding facilities that accept money from the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Los Angeles County it still requires healthcare workers must complete their primary vaccine series and receive at least one booster dose, or otherwise obtain an exemption from their institutions. This policy will be reviewed by September, but in the meantime, “new healthcare workers will need to comply with existing vaccination requirements,” County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said.

The county’s COVID-19 vaccination policy went into effect in October. January 1, 2021, more than five months after vaccines became available to all adults in California.

This decision had a wide resonance in Los Angeles County, the most populous in the country. With over 100,000 workers on the payroll, this is Southern California. biggest Employer, according to the county personnel department.

Elected Los Angeles County officials and public health officials said the vaccination mandate was appropriate when it was issued. Supervisor Janice Khan said at the time that COVID-19 had become the top killer of law enforcement officers across the country.

The county worker vaccination mandate protects not only employees, but the public they serve, officials say. Sheriff’s deputies and firefighters, for example, come into regular contact with vulnerable or elderly people who would be at extreme risk of serious illness if infected.

“If you’re in the business of supporting the most vulnerable people in the county, then it makes sense for people to get fully vaccinated, especially during a pandemic,” Ferrer said in early 2022 as Los Angeles County emerged from a deadly winter. Splash Omicron.

Data from that era of the pandemic showed that unvaccinated people had a higher risk of infection, hospitalization and death than those who had been vaccinated.

However, this requirement has been controversial, drawing backlash and warnings that it could provoke employees to flee. Critics included then-Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who stated in October 2021 that while he was personally vaccinated and believes the vaccine works, the decision must be personal. Villanueva also argued at the time that it didn’t make much sense to introduce a vaccination requirement “with the weakening of the pandemic”.

In fact, the requirement went into effect just weeks before the introduction of the Omicron variant, which led to a surge in cases, flooding hospitals and causing a surge in deaths only surpassed by the pandemic’s first devastating winter.

Los Angeles County employees can seek exemption from vaccination requirements if they have either medical reasons or “genuine religious beliefs, practices, or practices that conflict with a person’s ability to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.”

Of more than 100,000 employees throughout the county, 7,359 vaccine exemption requests have been approved. Officials said 68 workers were fired from their jobs in the county for failing to comply with vaccination policies.

At the time the employee vaccination mandate went into effect, 68% of Los Angeles County residents 6 months of age and older had received at least one dose of the vaccine. According to the latest data, 81% of residents in the same age range did so. It is not clear to what extent the vaccination mandate could have contributed to the increase in vaccination rates.

Much has changed since the officer’s original mandate was issued, including the introduction of an updated booster vaccine developed against a sprawling family of Omicron sub-options, abundant supplies of COVID-19 therapeutics, and broader immunity through vaccination and infection. The evolution of the coronavirus has also been more stable in the past year, meaning that many of the tools that were effective a few months ago remain so today.

While vaccines against the infection have declined in effectiveness, officials say they continue to provide strong protection against the worst health effects.

In January of this year, unvaccinated Californians were 2.6 times more likely to get sick and be hospitalized with COVID-19 and 2.9 times more likely to die from the disease than those who received at least their core vaccine series. according to from the California Department of Public Health.

More recently, Ferrer said that Los Angeles County has entered a new phase of the pandemic, with hospitals no longer at risk of being overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients.

“The place we are in right now is unique because transmission is relatively low and there are even fewer hospitalizations,” she said.

Ferrer added that COVID-19 vaccines are still important.

“We had two years when the vaccines proved to be effective. And we really don’t have the serious side effects that almost everyone who gets vaccinated experiences,” she said.

Over the past year, from April 2022 to March 2023, about 145,000 US residents have died from COVID-19, according to the agency. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

By comparison, there were 547,000 COVID-19 deaths between April 2020 and March 2021, and about 423,000 deaths between April 2021 and March 2022.

The U.S. death toll of 1.1 million from COVID-19 is more than from the last major global pandemic of its kind, the influenza pandemic, which began in 1918. This pandemic is estimated to have killed 675,000 people in the country.