The legislature gave final approval to a bill that would forbid a requirement of proof of vaccination when people go to certain places.
House Bill 4012 which was approved Saturday night, would forbid government entities at the state or local level, higher education institutions or hospitals from requiring proof of covid-19 vaccination as a condition for entering. The bill would invite people who believe they are being harmed by such policies to sue.
Senators voted 23-9 in favor of the bill Saturday afternoon. The House agreed to changes Saturday night before the midnight deadline.
Earlier discussion in the House of Delegates revealed few, if any, places in West Virginia requiring proof of vaccination for the public to enter.
“This bill, House Bill 4012, at this point in the pandemic, is scarcely needed,” said Senator Ron Stollings, D-Boone, the only one who spoke about it. “We’re on the wane, thank goodness.
“However, with this in mind, if we had a new variant the passage of this bill could prevent local governments, higher education institutions from being able to respond with a tool that may be able to reduce transmission within their communities.”
West Virginia now identifies just 1,432 active cases of covid-19. Over the past seven weeks, total active cases have decreased by more than 93 percent, Gov. Jim Justice and his administration reported on Friday.
This bill was one of several meant in reaction to the precautions put in place during the pandemic, although several were screened out over the course of the legislative process.
Another covid-related bill, one to forbid mask requirements in schools, seems to have stalled out in the Senate.
That bill, HB 4071, passed the House of Delegates and then was advanced by the Senate Education Committee on March 2. But that bill was assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which never took it up.
And earlier this week a Senate Committee voted down another bill inspired by the pandemic, saying that if employers have vaccine requirements then evidence of natural immunity or antibodies would suffice.
Much of the committee’s discussion Monday afternoon focused on whether the bill would actually be workable in real-life situations. Members noted that the bill doesn’t define an appropriate level of antibodies for the range of diseases that might be covered. And it doesn’t define what methods would be used as proof of an effective level of immunity.