More and more hospitals and major health systems are requiring employees to get the Covid-19 vaccine, citing rising caseloads fueled by the Delta variant and stubbornly low vaccination rates in their communities and even within their work force.
Many hospitals say their efforts to immunize their employees have stalled, in much the same way the nation’s overall vaccination rates are stuck under 60 percent, behind many European countries and Canada. While more than 96 percent of doctors say they are fully vaccinated, according to the American Medical Association, health care workers, particularly in rural areas, have proven more resistant even though thousands of workers have died from the virus and countless more became sick.
One recent estimate indicated that one in four hospital workers were not vaccinated by the end of May, with some facilities reporting that fewer than half of their employees had gotten the shots.
Some hospitals, ranging from academic medical centers like NewYork-Presbyterian and Yale New Haven to large chains like Trinity Health, are going ahead with a mandate because they recognize that the only way to stop the virus is to vaccinate as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. A large Arizona-based chain, Banner Health, announced Tuesday that it would impose a mandate, and New York City said it would require all health care workers at city-run hospitals or clinics to be vaccinated or undergo weekly testing.
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