University of California will require vaccines even without full FDA approval

The University of California will require students, faculty and staff to be vaccinated for Covid-19 this fall, even if the Food and Drug Administration does not give full approval to one of the existing vaccines, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The decision is a reversal from what UC was planning in April, when the university system announced it would require the vaccines as long as one of them was fully approved by the FDA before the fall term. Currently, the FDA has authorized emergency use for vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, but has not yet given full approval to any of them.

EdSource has asked UC officials to comment.

The state’s other public university system, the 23-campus California State University, is still planning to wait for the FDA to give full approval to a vaccine before implementing its own vaccine mandate.

“The plan announced in April (vaccine requirement pending full FDA approval) is still our current course,” Mike Uhlenkamp, a spokesman for CSU’s chancellor’s office, said in an email to EdSource. “We will continue to evaluate the situation as we move closer to the beginning of the fall term.”