Chancellor Mojdeh Mehdizadeh has announced in an email that the 4CD constituent group leaders have come up with an updated resolution to suspend the vaccine mandate for students and faculty. This means that both students and faculty will no longer be required to submit a proof of vaccination in order to attend in-person classes for the next semester. This resolution will be brought up in the next governing board discussion and will be effective on Jan. 2, 2023.

This suspension will not only be in effect at Los Medanos, but all colleges within the Contra College Community College District, such as Contra Costa and Diablo Valley. Mehdizadeh has also pointed out that other community college districts have already taken the initiative and have either already suspended their vaccination mandate or have removed the process of providing a proof of vaccination.

According to Mehdizadeh, this decision has been made due to new information gained from the Contra Costa Health Services. As listed on the CCHS website, nearly 85% of the county is fully vaccinated, yet COVID-19 still poses a huge risk for people both vaccinated and not.

“One of CCHS’s recent decisions has been to rescind its health order requiring the county’s first responders to be fully vaccinated or undergo routine testing,” said Mehdizadeh. “They found that due to mutations and new variants, both vaccinated and unvaccinated people are becoming infected at a similar rate.”

This new information has led to the decision to remove the vaccine document verification that was required for attending classes post pandemic. 4CD has considered this process a barrier for some of their students and have acknowledged that the registration process in order to attend college is already a struggle. They believe that this barrier of entry can no longer be justified following the recent findings from the CCHS and that by removing this barrier they can help lessen the burden for students who have struggled in the past to register for college.

Although proof of vaccination is no longer required to attend in-person classes or use in-person services after the fall semester, 4CD still strongly recommends taking proper precautions when coming onto campus, including being fully vaccinated. They also support voluntary mask wearing and even provide free masks, testing kits and hand sanitizer at all college campuses within Contra Costa.

For more information on how to prevent COVID-19, students can visit the 4CD website or the CCHS website .

“Let’s take care of one another and do what we can to prevent the spread,” said Mehdizadeh. “Stay home if you don’t feel well and practice good preventative hygiene.”