The city of West Covina could get approval to create its own public health department by the end of the year, more than three years after the idea was first floated amid the covid pandemic and business community backlash against state and county mandates.
At stake is whether the city becomes one of only a handful of municipal health departments in the state, and potentially millions of dollars that would fund the new department.
At their March 19 meeting, the West Covina City Council voted 4-1 to approve a contract with the Long Beach Public Health Department to provide laboratory testing services, which would be among the first planks the city nails down as it attempts to build their new department from scratch.
The effort began in late 2020, as some residents called for more local control to circumvent state mandates in response to the pandemic that shuttered businesses and took students learning online. At that time — nearing the height of lockdown angst — West Covina was just one among more than a dozen cities in the state that began looking into operating their own public health departments.
Three years later, while most other cities have seen their interest drop off, found the move impractical, or taken a wait-and-see approach, the city of West Covina has added a public health director department and officer position to their municipal code, informed the county public health department that they won’t be needing their health officer services, and is working with the state public health department toward obtaining approval.
City officials said they expect the green light to come as early as the end of the year, which would make West Covina just the fourth city in the state to operate their own public health department, after Pasadena, Long Beach, and Vernon.
They hope with it will come more responsiveness to local needs, after the city’s experience with L.A. County Public Health Department through the pandemic.
“During the COVID pandemic, we…
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