City of Eureka rescinds employee vaccination requirement as case rates continue to go down

EUREKA, Calif. — On Jan. 1, the City of Eureka rescinded its employee COVID-19 vaccination mandate. This, in addition the permanent closure three Humboldt County COVID testing clinics on Sunday, displays a very different start to the new year than the start of 2022, which began with a nationwide spike in COVID cases due to the rapid and far-reaching spread of the Omicron variant.

"Based on the numbers that we were seeing in our local community— as well as within our employment ranks— we decided to stop and rescind the policy on January 1, 2023," Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery said.

This local lull in precautions comes as case rates continue to improve across California.

"We started seeing no noticeable real spikes over the winter months, and then we also noticed that schools, as well as other local state and federal agencies, had removed their mandates," Slattery said.

Meanwhile, COVID regulations have been relaxed for a while now in Humboldt County, and statewide standards put forth by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal OSHA) were also revised on Jan. 1.

"It's just following the general trend of other agencies," Slattery said.

Slattery said more than 98% of current city staff are vaccinated against COVID-19, and he does not expect this number to decrease significantly now that the mandate is no longer in effect.

"We had a lot of people saying that they wanted to work for us because we did have this [mandate] in place, so they would feel protected," Slattery said.

Slattery also said while the current trend in Eureka does not necessitate a vaccination mandate, this doesn't necessarily mean it won't return in the future.

"We still reserve the right to reinstitute the policy if the conditions worsen or we get different information from the public health agencies," Slattery said.

Come Feb. 28, California will no longer be in the state of emergency it has been in since March 2020 when the pandemic was still in its infancy.