County Supervisors Vote Unanimously Against Vaccine Mandate but Will Require Weekly Testing of Unvaccinated Staff

Humboldt County’s Board of Supervisors decided against a vaccine mandate for County employees on Tuesday afternoon.  “Over four hours of frequently searing debate over a vaccine mandate which would decide the inoculation fate of an unknown number of yet unvaccinated County employees…” The Sups decided not to issue an outright vaccine mandate for County employees, instead opting to implement a weekly testing protocol to screen for cases among unvaccinated staff.  

The meeting offered a passionate debate, consciously steered by board members away from political discourse in favor of circumstantial considerations of the community, such as staffing or lack thereof.  This new weekly testing requirement is not extended to vaccinated staff, to the disappointment of Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell.  Bushnell  wanted to screen all employees for COVID-19 infection, as opposed to only testing those who are unvaccinated.  Bushnell asked multiple times why it was not advisable for all employees to be screened, in light of current facts and science demonstrating that vaccinated community members also transmit the virus if infected, albeit at a significantly reduced rate, as Dr. Hoffman reiterated.  

Later in the meeting, Bushnell asked, “With the idea of testing, the idea is to not have people come into our work area that are testing positive, but if we’re only testing the unvaccinated, it sounds like the spread is just as much with unvaccinated people.”  Hoffman responded, explaining that those who are vaccinated experience less serious symptoms, and said spread is “significantly less, 50% or more, if someone is vaccinated.” 

Later, Bushnell asked for further clarification from the Health Officer, asking “what happens with the mask thing? Does it go away?”  Bushnell continued, insisting that testing all staff would make sense, considering that both vaccinated and unvaccinated are able to be infected as well as spread the virus, although at lesser rates.  Bushnell asked for clarification as to why testing would not be recommended for both groups, and reiterated, “I don’t understand the halfway part. I don’t.” 

Dr. Hoffman repeatedly mentioned that testing vaccinated individuals who are not showing symptoms and don’t believe they have been exposed – for example, as a regular screening test – is not recommended by the CDC, but Hoffman did not offer any further insight as to why this level of comprehensive testing for screening purposes is not being advised when it comes to those who are vaccinated.  

The Choices

The options presented to the County Board of Supervisors offered either no change in protocol, a full vaccine mandate for county staff, or a weekly COVID-19 testing option without a vaccine mandate.  

Option #1 was described simply as “Status Quo” and would have continued to follow State, Federal and Public Health guidelines and orders in place as currently.  

Option #3 was the vaccine mandate, which would have required county staff to get vaccinations across the board.  The Supes were informed via the staff report provided, that “Federal and state law make it clear that employers may require employees to receive an FDA-approved vaccination against COVID-19 infection so long as the employer does not discriminate against or harass employees or job applicants on the basis of a protected characteristic, provides reasonable accommodations related to disability or sincerely-held religious beliefs or practices, and does not retaliate against anyone for engaging in protected activity such as requesting a reasonable accommodation.”  

Option #4 would require that new hires to the County workforce, including for the Sheriff’s Department, would need to get vaccinated as a condition of employment.  Supervisor Bass was hesitant to vote on this issue before learning more from Sheriff Honsal, while Madrone suggested that all county employees should be treated the same in regard to testing or vaccination standards.  

Text message screenshot from last week showing California’s Public Health outreach is actively encouraging citizens to seek out a vaccination.

Supervisor Bass pointed out that new hires in most contexts often face changes in circumstances when accepting terms of new employment.  Bushnell flatly rejected the idea of supporting a vaccination mandate, saying “I will not vote for a vaxx mandate for new hires.” 

When asked for his input on the subject of new law enforcement recruits, Sheriff Wiliam Honsal was not in favor of option #4 due to potentially losing interested transfers to Humboldt County because of a vaccination requirement.  “I honestly don’t recommend that.  I think it does diminish our pool.”  He went on, “ I just don’t want a vaccine mandate to prevent new hires to want to come work for the County of Humboldt.”  

Madrone indicated he was leaning away from this requirement for new hires, but the discussion was ultimately kicked down the proverbial county road to be addressed by the board at a later date. 

UNANIMOUS VOTE  

Option #2 was the winner, and requires weekly COVID-19 testing for unvaccinated county staff.  According to the written report to the board, “This option would require employees to verify with the county whether they are vaccinated, and if unvaccinated, would need to submit to weekly testing.” 

The board was told that this option would be the most expensive and labor-intensive, due to the volume of testing that would likely need to be done.  The board was advised that “regular testing by county employees could overwhelm” our local OptumServe COVID-19 testing resource. The report says it is “not possible to order testing resources for all county employees from commercial and big box retailers.”

As outlined in the staff report provided to the board of Supervisors, the three different kinds of testing offered in this scenario would be either 15-minute rapid test, the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) testing with results returned within 24 hours up to 2 days, or antibody testing, which would measure a person’s immunity response level. 

Testing could be “deployed” within hours via mobile on-site and drive-through sites. The cost is quoted as a maximum of $150 per person for a single 15-minute rapid test, or for a PCR test, the insurance may be billed directly.  This option notes that CAl-OSHA has standards that are expected to be met.  The board was advised in writing, “Cal/OSHA’s Emergency Temporary Standards, as well as follow up permanent standards, require the county to have an organizational infrastructure to track and maintain vaccination records.”  This second option would also entail purchases of personal protective equipment (PPE) (such as N95 masks, and sanitizer) for individuals who are “exempt from a vaccination requirement.”  The report notes that these inevitable PPE costs are unknown at this point.”  

Dr. Hoffman Touted the effectiveness of the vaccine, saying that the Public Health Department supports any efforts to increase vaccination rates across the county.  “unvaccinated are 11 times more likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19 than those who are fully vaccinated.” 

Linda Le, the director of Human Resources for the County, noted for the board that, since March of 2020, COVID-19 has affected local functions and government operations, and prompted mitigation measures such as masking and distancing. Those efforts have been effective in reducing COVID-19 exposure in the workplace, Le asserted. Offering a ‘risk management perspective’ to the county supervisors, Le reported the workplace data tracking COVID cases in county workers showed a total of 83 cases that were reported since September of 2020, when the state began tracking this date. In June of 2021 the County only had recorded 2 cases of county employees who reported being sick with COVID, in July the county recorded 9 cases, and then in August alone there were a total of 31 cases recorded among county staff during the County’s Delta surge. In August, twenty of those 31 cases voluntarily self-reported that they were vaccinated, according to Le. 

Le runs through the data on county staff for the board to consider.

Connie Beck, Health and Human Services director strongly recommended Option #1 – to maintain the status quo in regard to vaccination mandates.  Beck said, “As an administrator, I can’t recommend anything other than option #1 at this point.”  Beck went on to say that the department is critically understaffed. “DHHS’ overall vacancy rate…right now is 23% – that’s 324 positions in Health and Human Services.”  She also mentioned that “out of all of our employees – 3% of the employees, or 38 – have tested positive since the start of the pandemic.” 

In regard to the County’s preferred method of self-attestation, Le specifically noted that although every county employee was asked to provide a document – saying that they were either vaccinated, unvaccinated, or declined to say – out of the 2400 total county staff, only 957 returned the county’s form. That is 37% of the county workforce having provided the self-attestation form indicating their individual vaccination status, according to Le.  

Humboldt County’s Sheriff and Coroner William Honsal gave his feedback to the board, weighing in favor of status quo, but stopped short of agreeing with a mandate.  Honsal suggested the county had earned a round of applause for it’s response to the pandemic in general.  “We are coming out of our latest surge – and yes, we did have some county employees that did test positive. That is going to be indicative of people getting sick at work.  This happens in our congregate facility during the flu season as well.”  Honsal went on to agree with Beck, referencing what he called the county’s staffing crisis, calling for the board to maintain status quo, and not make any changes for county employees.  

Sheriff Honsal cautioned the Supes that a mandate would cause the Sheriff’s department a significant level of grief, and warned of a possible loss of staff.“It is going to be a logistical nightmare for someone to actually get out there to make sure all people are tested,” he told the Supervisors. “[W]hat are you going to do? Are you really going to fire people for not adhering to this? And then what is the process for that to happen? As the police bill of rights… it takes a lot, and due process to fire someone, and give proper notice. And so that is something you all should be considering.  That is going to be a very difficult process for us to do that.”     

District Attorney Maggie Flemming weighed in, not agreeing with the mandate. Fleming also preferred to maintain the status quo, and noted the staffing shortage facing many of the County’s departments.  

Supervisor Bass asked for more specific feedback as opposed to ‘anecdotal” information regarding people quitting jobs as a result of a vaccine mandate.  

Honsal responded, “Just to answer Supervisor Bass’s question, just so you know, we have received a lot of inquiries from cities and counties that have put vaccine mandates in place, and we actually are having people apply to us because their employer is requiring vaccines.” 

Public Health Officer Dr. Ian Hoffman speaks to the Supes about testing for surveillance of COVID cases.

In regard to running the testing operations, the County’s Public Health Director Michelle Williams, “We do not have existing staff to take this on right now.”  Williams suggested that it would be an employer policy, and therefore would fall on the shoulders of the County’s HR Department to coordinate, and would not be the responsibility of the County’s Public Health operations.

There are some County employees, according to Stephens, who are currently refusing to comply with regular testing requirements as well as being negligent in completing what is called a “declination form” that simply asserts that a particular employee declines to get vaccinated.  Supervisor Wilson suggested that an employee manual would be one way to assert the standard of being vaccinated, saying, “We’re not reinventing the wheel.” 

As a point of clarification, Supervisor Bass asked about staff who work remotely – 100% remote employees would not be required to test, unless they needed to come into the public work space. The exact number of county staff currently working remotely was not known off hand.  

Supervisor Madrone expressed disappointment in the quality of discourse coming from the public comment section of the meeting, agreeing with Bohn as he noted that “threats of being recalled don’t sit well with anyone.”  Madrone made mention that in the weeks leading up to the meeting on this topic, ¾ of the feedback he received was from county employees who expressed support for mandated vaccinations, but that this was not reflected in the public comment calls. 

Many of the public comment calls were adamant that the VAERS website offered information and validated concerns of vaccine opponents.  However, VAERS accepts unverified reports submitted from any source, after any vaccination, and therefore consists of a wide range of described experiences.  The CDC offers information, monitors adverse events reported following vaccination, and maintains that the vaccines available are safe and highly effective.  The CDC explicitly states, “Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem.”

Several callers during the public comment period made reference to the Nuremberg Code, asserting that “forced vaccinations” would be a violation of human rights and personal liberties.  However, vaccinations are currently mandated in order to have a number of jobs and attend most schools. A 1905 ruling in favor of mandatory vaccinations made by the US Supreme Court noted, “Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own [liberty], whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.” Or in much simpler terms, the ruling is simply a restatement of the old adage that ‘My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.’

The meeting was adjourned with an understanding that details and logistics would be worked out in coming days and weeks with input from the county’s Human Resources Department.