LONG ISLAND, NY – Long after the end of nursing school, Rachel H. continued to study, always keeping up to date on the most recent studies and clinical trials in the medical field. It did not matter whether the material concerned a controversial state-of-the-art medical treatment or a new drug. She has been following the progress of the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines and is not willing to roll up her sleeves anytime soon due to concerns about the long-term effects, despite her fear of contracting COVID-19.
“There is no data on that. You will be the data – that is the only thing,” said Rachel, a Suffolk County resident who works in a mental health clinic. She declined to be identified for privacy reasons. “It’s a fear that everyone has. You can do it [COVID-19] and you get sick. “
The lack of data for the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccine worries Rachel, so she plans to give the vaccine development more time and possibly will consider the next version of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, because she has a friend who is involved with the clinic attempts.
“I would be more open to this because it is more traditional,” she said, noting that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is similar to the flu vaccine, which is adjusted annually to combat a different strain of flu.
The Pfizer phase 3 vaccine trial, which had 43,448 participants, was “well tolerated and demonstrated 95% vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19,” the company said in a press release last month.
Another concern for Rachel is that current vaccines available in the United States use mRNA technology, which does not contain a live or weakened virus, but encourages the body to create a protein to boost immunity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Diseases. She still considers experimental vaccines because they were released so quickly under emergency approvals from the Federal Drug Administration, but she says that does not mean they are not safe.
“This is something that nobody really noticed before, so we don’t know about the long-term effects,” she said.
Health experts are warning of the number of health professionals who refuse to be vaccinated.
“For me, it is really extremely important that we get the right information for healthcare professionals, and that we quickly dispense with myths and misinformation,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Hill.
In a Los Angeles Times report, less than half of hospital staff eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at St. Elizabeth’s Community Hospital in Tehema County, California, were willing to take it as soon as it was offered. At Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, CA, one in five staff members refused the vaccine.
April Wu, a 31-year-old nurse who worked at Providence Holy Cross, told The Times that she refused the vaccine because she is six months pregnant and is not sure how safe the vaccine is because there has been no clinical trial in pregnant women.
“I am choosing the risk – the risk of having COVID or the risks of the unknown of having the vaccine,” Wu told The Times. “I think I’m choosing COVID. I can control this and avoid wearing masks, although I’m not 100% sure.”
Dr. Stephen Noble, a 43-year-old cardiothoracic surgeon from Portland, OR, told the Associated Press that he was also postponing the vaccine.
“I don’t think anyone wants to be a guinea pig,” he said. “At the end of the day, as a man of science, I just want to see what the data shows. And show me the complete data.”
In New York, more than half of EMS workers showed skepticism about getting the vaccine, according to a New York Post report citing alarming declines in vaccination rates by hospital staff in the United States
Government and hospital response to the dilemma
In his daily news briefing updating members of the media about the pandemic last Friday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that vaccination rates among hospital staff vary by region of the state, with higher numbers tending to be present in the city of New York. Vaccination declination rates also vary, but are higher outside the metropolitan area with the highest decline rate in the Mid-Hudson region, which reached 28 percent, according to Cuomo.
On Long Island, 60% of hospital staff were vaccinated, while only 13% refused to be vaccinated. One of the lowest vaccination rates for hospital workers was found in Santa Catarina de Siena, in Smithtown, where only 34 percent of its employees were vaccinated.
Of the 130,000 people working in “specialized nursing” facilities in the state, 32 percent refused to be vaccinated when given the opportunity, Cuomo said on Monday, according to the New York Times.
A request to stop declines by hospital was not immediately available from the state Department of Health or the Cuomo office.
Cuomo compared nurses serving on the front lines who are opting out of the vaccine and continuing to care for the public to “super-disseminators” or people who infect many other people with the coronavirus through close contact.
“Nobody wants to go to a hospital and be treated by a COVID nurse. You don’t help people like that, ”he said.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that health professionals be vaccinated and prioritize those on the front line, such as emergency room and intensive care nurses, but getting the vaccine is not mandatory for these workers. The questions seeking requests for comments and clarifications from the press offices of the local hospitals were left unanswered as to the number of hospital staff who chose not to participate in the vaccination process.
Rosemary Gomez, a spokeswoman for St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, which is part of Long Island Catholic Health Systems and one of the hardest hit hospitals last spring, declined to comment on the story.
Northwell Health spokesman Jason Molinet offered some hints that the rate of decline has been monitored by the state and that, so far, Northwell, which is the largest healthcare system on the island, has vaccinated more than 30,000 employees.
Lisa Greiner, a spokeswoman for NYU Winthrop in Mineola, said the health care system is using “continuing education to strongly encourage employees to be vaccinated”.
Cynthia Ruf, vice president of branding and stakeholder relations at Long Island Community Hospital in East Patchogue, also made no specific comments about employees who chose to leave the vaccination process, although she said the hospital had “great success “administering the first round of doses to employees. “We don’t waste any vaccines and we already have employees registered for when we receive our next distribution,” she said by email.
Staff at Stony Brook Medicine hospital, which includes its main teaching hospital, as well as Stony Brook Southampton Hospital and Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport, are encouraging all qualified employees to get the vaccine, a spokesman said.
Like NYU Winthrop, the system is providing education to employees about the vaccine and has “doctors available to answer questions that employees may have about the vaccine,” according to a statement from Stony Brook Medicine. The statement went on to stretch employees’ adherence to CDC guidelines, such as “proper and consistent use” of personal protective equipment and hand hygiene to “minimize the chance of contagion and dissemination”.
Requests for comment from 1199 SEIU Healthcare Workers East, the largest collective bargaining unit representing most Long Island hospitals, were not answered. Just before the person was vaccinated in the United States – a nurse at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park – the union, on December 12, asked workers to get the vaccine, calling it “a critical step in helping to protect members’ health and end the devastating pandemic that has plagued our nation. ”
A request for comment from the union representing workers at Stony Brook University Hospital Medical Center was also unanswered.
Refusal of the vaccine is a chance for some, others a personal choice
Wu told The Los Angeles Times that she would risk and trust her PPE and reported that colleagues were also taking a risk by choosing to leave the vaccination process. “I feel like people think, ‘I can still survive to the end without getting the vaccine,” she told a Times reporter.
Rachel H. said she has overcome the pandemic by working from home and, as restrictions have eased, returned to the office without hiring COVID-19. When asked if she is afraid of contracting the virus, she admitted that she was.
“Of course, I already thought about it and I’m not sure the vaccine will protect me,” he said.
Rachel said she heard people in the community criticizing frontline health workers who are not getting the vaccine and that frustrates her because she realizes that workers are professionals with more knowledge of medicine and vaccine distribution.
“I say, ‘They have their reasons,'” she said.
She disagrees with any notion that health professionals are spreading too much if they don’t get the vaccine, because she doesn’t believe they would show up to work on the symptoms and put their patients in danger. However, she understands the need to vaccinate as many people as possible, but stressed that it is their personal preference.
“They still have a say in what goes on in their bodies,” she said.
Although she noticed that if she were a frontline worker, she might think differently about getting the vaccine. But for now, it is a personal choice for each employee and everyone will have different opinions on the matter, she said.
“I really think that when more vaccines are launched, more people in the healthcare field will be open to taking them,” she said.