F.D.A. Limits Use of Antibody Treatments That Don’t Work on Omicron

SACRAMENTO — As health experts warn that Covid-19 will remain a fixture of life after the current surge passes, a group of California legislators on Monday rolled out the latest in a package of proposals aimed at coping with the coronavirus long-term in the most populous U.S. state.

In a measure that would treat the virus like measles and whooping cough — longstanding threats against which most Americans are vaccinated in childhood — the lawmakers said they would seek to eliminate an exemption for “personal belief” from a new mandate that schoolchildren receive coronavirus vaccinations.

Last week, the group — roughly a half-dozen members of the State Legislature’s Democratic majority — introduced a bill that would allow children 12 and older to be vaccinated against the coronavirus regardless of parental consent, as is the case in California for immunization against hepatitis B and human papillomavirus. Additional proposals for workplace and consumer protections and for countering vaccine disinformation are expected in the coming weeks.

Amid a towering surge in cases and hospitalizations driven by the Omicron variant, the proposals are part of a push not only to drive down infections and strengthen the state’s aggressive health protections, but also to set the stage for a future in which the virus becomes a manageable risk.

In news conferences this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom has hinted that state policy will soon begin “the endemic phase of this reality and how we live with future variants.” Last week, a group of physicians at the University of California, San Francisco petitioned state health policymakers to ease masking requirements in public schools, among other emergency measures, calling for a “post-Omicron pivot.”

“You can’t just drive this virus down, you’ve got to keep it down,” said Senator Richard Pan, a Sacramento pediatrician who has led the state’s efforts on vaccine policy and is the chairman of the Senate’s health committee. “With these kinds of fundamental policies in place, we hopefully can lift other restrictions that are more intrusive and less effective, because there’s no indication that Covid is going away.”

California’s Covid vaccination rates are among the nation’s highest, with about 67 percent of children 12 to 17 fully vaccinated, roughly the same as the state’s overall population. Dominated by Democrats, who hold a legislative supermajority, the electorate has largely supported the state’s emphasis on public health.

But vaccination rates vary widely from county to county. And a mandate that Mr. Newsom issued in October, adding Covid vaccines to the list of immunizations required for California’s more than six million K-12 students, is contingent on Food and Drug Administration approval of vaccines for each age group.

The F.D.A. has granted emergency authorization for the Pfizer vaccine in children ages 5 to 15, but has given full approval only for people 16 and older. The mandate is not expected to cover most students until at least July.

Additionally, because the vaccine was added to the school immunization list by the governor rather than the Legislature, state law requires that families be allowed to opt out if their personal beliefs preclude vaccination. Closing that loophole is expected to engender fierce backlash, as is the proposal to let older children be vaccinated against Covid-19 without parental consent.

When the 2014-15 measles outbreak at Disneyland prompted the state to end the personal belief exemption for other required immunizations, vaccine resisters jammed the Capitol for weeks, screaming at lawmakers in hallways and harassing public health lobbyists on sidewalks.

Senator Pan received death threats, and demonstrators invaded his wife’s dental practice. In 2019, after a further tightening of vaccine rules, an anti-vaccine activist livestreamed himself assaulting the senator outside a Sacramento restaurant.

Senator Pan said that aligning Covid policies with California’s other vaccine laws, which are among the nation’s strictest, would help raise vaccination rates and minimize educational disruptions. In the state’s largest school district, in Los Angeles, roughly nine in 10 students have complied with a mandate that conditions in-person instruction on vaccination for students 12 and older, even though a lack of documentation among some 34,000 students recently prompted the district to postpone enforcement of the requirement.

Last month, a judge in San Diego struck down a Covid vaccine mandate for students there, and the Los Angeles school system has been sued over its mandate. In a letter on Friday, officials in those districts urged legislators to take “urgent action” to mandate coronavirus vaccinations for students statewide.