SF Has Twice As Many Unvaccinated Muni Employees Than Unvaccinated Cops
A lot is being made of the fact that San Francisco still has more than 300 police officers and SFPD staff who still refuse to get vaccinated. That’s bad, but Muni has it twice as bad. According to a new report from the San Francisco Municipal Transit association, there are nearly 650 Muni drivers and staffers who are currently unvaccinated.
“As of today, we have approximately 640 employees who are either unvaccinated or have nor reported their vaccination status,” according to an SFMTA report deleted September 30. That report also notes that Muni service could be “significantly disrupted on November 1,” when the vaccination mandate for city employees takes effect.
The Chronicle points out that those 640 employees make up “about 10% of the SFMTA’s workforce.” The police department has a slightly higher unvaccinated rate than SFMTA, with 313 out of 2,835 employees still unvaccinated, which means 11% of the police department workforce is still not vaccinated.
But realize those are still better vaccination rates than the city’s general public. According to the SF COVID-19 vaccination dashboard, 88% of eligible SF residents have received at least one dose. That means 12% of the SF population is not vaccinated, slightly higher than the Muni and SFPD unvaccinated percentages.
But police and Muni drivers are public-facing essential workers, they deal with the public at large. We need them to have much higher vaccination rates than the general public. And we hope the vaccination mandate does its job and gets them vaccinated by November 1.
Otherwise, Muni is going to get even slower.