COVID vaccine mandate for health workers? Over 50 major medical groups support idea

Doctors, nurses and other health care workers are calling for hospitals and long-term care facilities to make a COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for employees as the delta variant continues to spread and vaccination rates lag.

More than 50 professional societies and organizations signed a statement Monday urging health care and long-term care employers to require workers to get a vaccine, calling it the “logical fulfillment of the ethical commitment“ those who work in health care make to keep patients safe.

The groups include the American Medical Association, American Nurses Association and American Academy of Pediatrics.

“We stand with the growing number of experts and institutions that support the requirement for universal vaccination of health workers,” the statement reads. “While we recognize some workers cannot be vaccinated because of identified medical reasons and should be exempted from a mandate, they constitute a small minority of all workers.”

Health care workers were among the first segment of the population to receive the vaccine in December. According to the American Thoracic Society, about one in four health care workers had not been vaccinated by the end of May.

The push for a vaccine mandate in hospitals comes amid a resurgence of new daily coronavirus cases in the U.S., which health experts have largely attributed to the highly contagious delta variant.

New cases nationwide climbed to over 118,000 on Friday — up from a low of about 8,000 in mid-June, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

“As the number of cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise due to the COVID-19 delta variant, especially among unvaccinated persons, requiring that all health care workers who can get vaccinated receive a COVID-19 vaccine will help protect them, their patients, loved ones and others who are vulnerable and immunocompromised,” said Dr. George M. Abraham, president of the American College of Physicians, which also signed the statement.

Several hospital systems have already instituted a mandatory vaccine requirement for employees.

In North Carolina, major hospital systems announced a vaccine mandate on Thursday after the N.C. Healthcare Association came out in favor of the requirement, The News & Observer reported. They included Duke Health hospitals and UNC Health Hospitals in Raleigh and surrounding areas and Atrium Health and Novant Health in Charlotte.

Banner Health in Arizona announced last week it would impose a similar mandate, The New York Times reported, and New York City is requiring health care workers at city-run hospitals or clinics to get a coronavirus vaccine or submit to weekly COVID-19 testing.

Chad Neilsen, the director of infection prevention at UF Health in Jacksonville, Florida, told The Times only half of its health care workforce is vaccinated and at least 75 workers are out sick with the coronavirus.

“It’s like déjà vu,” he said, according to The Times. “We have a reason to believe this could be over if people got vaccinated.”

Houston Methodist in Texas was one of the first health care systems in the country to make a COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for employees, The Texas Tribune reported. A former employee sued over the policy but lost in federal court when a judge tossed the case earlier this month.

Since then, more than 150 workers have been fired or resigned, according to the newspaper.

In his opinion dismissing the suit, the judge wrote Houston Methodist’s decision to require COVID-19 vaccines “is not coercion.”

“Methodist is trying to do their business of saving lives without giving them the COVID-19 virus,” he said in the opinion. “It is a choice made to keep staff, patients, and their families safer.”

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