Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said that he will not be requiring his employees to adhere to the county's COVID-19 vaccine mandate due to concerns that he could lose a significant number of his workforce.
The mandate, issued by executive order in August, requires all Los Angeles County employees to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 1 but allows religious and medical exemptions.
Villanueva, who oversees the largest sheriff’s department in the county with approximately 18,000 employees, said Thursday in a Facebook Live event that his workforce is willing to be terminated if it means that they do not have to get the vaccine.
"I don’t want to be in a position to lose 5, 10 percent of my workforce overnight on a vaccine mandate," he said.
Villanueva reiterated these comments during a Friday appearance on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle," when he told guest host Raymond Arroyo that hundreds of his employees would risk losing their jobs over the mandate. He also emphasized that Los Angeles cannot afford to lose any more deputies as it is already struggling to handle crises such as the surging homeless population.
The sheriff said that the department was a political target when it was hit with a hiring freeze after already being down by more than 1,000 employees.
"This is so politicized, I cannot in good conscience impose a mandate like that," he said.
And while Villanueva said that he is vaccinated and encouraged employees to get their shots as well, he does not want to mandate it.
Villanueva said in July that he would not enforce a county mask mandate that was reinstated following a surge of coronavirus cases due to the highly infectious Delta variant because he said it was "not backed by science" and contradicted guidelines from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The city of Los Angeles on Wednesday approved one of the nation’s strictest vaccine mandates, mandating that individuals must be vaccinated if they wish to enter a bar, restaurant, shopping center, salon, gym, sporting venue and many other locations.
This, despite coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations declining by around 50 percent since late August, according to health officials.
More than 26,000 people have died from COVID-19 in Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the nation.
According to public health officials, 78 percent of the county's 10 million residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine while 69 percent are fully vaccinated.
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