The new requirement in California, which covers 246,000 state government employees, plus the two million health care workers in the public and private sectors, will begin on Aug. 2 and be implemented by Aug. 23, Mr. Newsom said.
“We are exhausted by the right-wing echo chamber that has been perpetuating misinformation around the vaccine and its efficacy and safety,” Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, said. “We are exhausted by its politicization of this pandemic, and that includes mask wearing that has been equated to the Holocaust. It’s disgraceful, it’s unconscionable and it needs to be called out.”
California averages almost 6,400 new virus cases per day, an increase of more than 200 percent in the past two weeks. More than 64 percent of adults in the state are fully vaccinated, according to federal data.
Last month, San Francisco announced that all of its workers, more than 35,000 people, would have to receive a vaccine or risk disciplinary action after F.D.A. approval of at least one of the three vaccines now being administered under an emergency order. Several Bay Area counties, Stanford University and the 10 campuses of the University of California have also recently announced some type of mandate to help improve stalling vaccination rates.
The order in New York City, affecting roughly 340,000 city workers, including teachers and police officers, would begin for most workers on Sept. 13, the day when nearly one million students in the nation’s largest school district return to class. Mr. de Blasio has signaled that school reopening is critical to the city’s recovery from the pandemic.
“September is the pivot point of the recovery,” Mr. de Blasio said on Monday, also referring to the number of workers who are scheduled to return to offices in Manhattan.
The Biden administration has said it is not the federal government’s role to impose a nationwide mandate. But for the Department of Veterans Affairs, the risk to veterans, who tend to be older, sicker and possibly more vulnerable to illness, was becoming too great, said Denis McDonough, the secretary of veterans affairs, in an interview on Monday.
