Several universities will be requiring students to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning in the fall.
According to The Associated Press, the University of California and California State University campuses recently announced they intend to require students, faculty, and staff to get vaccinated before returning.
CSU Chancellor Joseph I. Castro said in a statement, “Together, the CSU and UC enroll and employ more than one million students and employees across 33 major university campuses, so this is the most comprehensive and consequential university plan for COVID-19 vaccines in the country.”
California’s state school systems will be joining more than 30 colleges that say vaccines will be required before students can return in the fall, including Yale University, Georgetown University, and Stanford University.
Other schools that made similar announcements include Duke University, Brown University, Northeastern University, the University of Notre Dame, and Syracuse University.
Rutgers University was potentially the first large university in the country to start a COVID-19 vaccine requirement, NPR reports.
“The benefits of COVID-19 vaccination include prevention of serious illness, hospitalization, and death from the virus,” the school’s leadership said in a statement.
They continued, “Broad immunization is critical to help stop the current pandemic and to protect our University community.”
An ABC News/Washington Post poll published on Monday found 50% of respondents said they support colleges and universities requiring students to get vaccinated before coming back to campus, and 47% said they oppose it. Out of that group, 72% of Democrats supported it, compared to 28% of Republicans.