The long-awaited vaccine campaign against coronavirus in the U.S. goes against an unlikely quarter: There are staggering numbers of health care workers who have witnessed just the death and misery made COVID-19 reject shots.
It’s happening in nursing homes and, to a lesser extent, in hospitals, with staff voicing what experts say are feared without the side effects of vaccines developed at a faster pace. soon. More than three weeks into the campaign, some places are seeing up to 80% of employees hold back.
“I don’t think anyone wants to be a guinea pig,” said Dr. Stephen Noble, a 42-year cardiothoracic surgeon in Portland, Oregon, who is delaying getting vaccinated. “At the end of the day, as a scientist, I just want to see what the data shows. And give me the full data. ”
Named by the surprise, some administrators have hung everything from a free breakfast at Waffle House to a raffle for a car to get workers to roll up their molds. Some states have threatened to let others cut ahead of health care workers in the line for shots.
“It’s far too low. It’s terribly low, ”said Neil Pruitt, CEO of PruittHealth, which runs around 100 long-term care homes in the south, where less than 3 in 10 employees offer the vaccine so far accepted.
Many medical facilities from the state of Florida to Washington have boasted about accepting the almost universal views, and employees have posted pictures of themselves on the social media receiving the vaccine. Elsewhere, however, the driver has fallen.
Although the federal government has not released any data on how many people have offered the vaccines they have taken, there are signs of a nationwide outbreak.
In Illinois, a state-of-the-art separation at the homes of state veterans has opened up between residents and employees. The worst difference was at the veterans ’home in Manteno, where 90% of residents were vaccinated but only 18% of staff.
In rural Ashland, Alabama, about 90 of the 200 employees at Clay County Hospital have yet to agree to receive the vaccine, even with so much space with COVID-19 patients that oxygen runs low and beds added to the intensive care unit, divided by plastic cover.
The push-back is still among the deadliest in the uprising, with the death toll at more than 350,000, and could hamper the government’s vaccination effort somewhere in between 70% and 85% of the U.S. population to “achieve herd immunity. “
Administrators and public health officials have expressed hope that more health workers will choose to be vaccinated while watching their colleagues pick up the scenes without difficulty.
Oregon doctor Noble said he will wait until April or May to get the pictures. He said it was vital for public health authorities not to overstate their knowledge of the vaccines. That’s especially important, he said, for black people like him who are distrustful of government medical guidance because of past failures and abuses, such as the infamous Tuskegee trial.
Medical journals have published extensive data on the vaccines, and the Food and Drug Administration has published its analysis publicly. But misinformation about the scenes has spread wildly online, leading to misconceptions that they are causing fertility problems.
Stormy Tatom, 30, an ICU nurse at the hospital in Beaumont, Texas, said she decided not to get the vaccine right now “because of the long-term unknown side effects. ”
“I would say at least half of my coworkers feel the same way,” Tatom said.
There were no signs of widespread side effects from the vaccines, and scientists say the drugs have been rigorously tested on tens of thousands and studied by independent experts.
States have begun to turn up the pressure. The South Carolina governor took health care workers to Jan. 15 to get a bullet or “move to the back of the line.” Georgia’s chief health officer has allowed some vaccines to be transferred to other frontline workers, including firefighters and police, out of harassment with their slow delivery.
“The vaccine is available but it literally sits in freezers,” said Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey. “That’s impossible. We have lives to save. ”
Nursing homes were among the institutions that received priority for the pictures because the virus has cut through a terrible oath. Residents and long-term care workers make up about 38% of the country’s COVID-19 deaths.
In West Virginia, only about 55% of nursing home workers agreed with the views when they were offered them last month, according to Martin Wright, who leadership of the West Virginia Healthcare Association.
“It’s a race against social media,” Wright said of fighting lies about the vaccines.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine that only 40% of state nursing home workers have received sights. North Carolina’s chief public health official believed more than half of them were refusing the vaccine there.
SavaSeniorCare has offered money to the 169 long-term care homes in its 20-state network to pay for gift cards, parties with social distance or other incentives. But so far, data from around a third of its households show that 55% of workers have refused the vaccine.
CVS and Walgreens, which have been contracted by a majority of U.S. nursing homes to provide COVID-19 vaccines, have not released specific information about uptake. CVS said residents have agreed to be vaccinated at a “high level of confidence” but that “initial uptake among staff is low,” in part due to efforts to stop people receiving -work their pictures.
Some facilities have vaccinated employees in stages so that employees are not raped all at once if they are experiencing minor side effects, which may lead to including fever and pain.
The apology is not surprising, with the mixed message from political leaders and misinformation online, said Dr. Wilbur Chen, a professor at the University of Maryland who specializes in vaccine science.
He noted that health care workers represent a wide range of occupations and backgrounds and said they are not necessarily more informed than the general public.
“They don’t know what to believe anymore,” Chen said. But he said he expects laziness to subside as more people get the vaccine and public health officials get their message.
Some places have already seen a turnaround, such as Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
“The main thing that helped us gain confidence in our staff was watching other staff get vaccinated, being okay, walking out of the workplace. the room, you know, without growing a third ear, so that’s like an avalanche, ”said Dr. Catherine O’Neal, chief medical officer. “The first few hundred we created another 300 who wanted the vaccine.”
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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jake Bleiberg in Dallas; Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas; Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans; Candice Choi in New York; Kelli Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama; Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; John Seewer of Toledo, Ohio; Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Bryan Anderson in Raleigh, North Carolina.