Some officials have already begun to reject the idea. Early respondents in New Mexico sued after a county official ordered firefighters, prison guards and other first responders to receive injections. And at the 120-bed Rock Haven nursing home in Wisconsin, 21 employees resigned after asylum administrators and county officials issued a vaccine warrant for the team.
Michael Anderson, a lawyer representing 15 members of the Rock Haven team who threaten legal action, said his clients objected to being forced into “a cold mental calculation”. He said the choice they faced was, “Do I give up or do something I don’t really want?”
“They have risked their lives for more than a year,” said Anderson. “Some of my clients got the vaccine, but they felt compelled to do so.”
Anderson said he filed a warning about his clients’ intention to sue, but a lawsuit has not yet been opened.
Rock Haven County Administrator Josh Smith said the decision to require mandatory firing was made to increase the safety of vulnerable residents of the facility.
In a survey of long-term care facilities across the country, a CDC report found that 62% of nursing home workers are refusing the vaccine. At the same time, medical experts say vaccines are extremely effective and safe, with a recent CDC report showing an extremely low rate of serious adverse reactions.
Experts said that, in general terms, nursing homes face a difficult choice.
The distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine in nursing homes is believed to be behind a significant decline in deaths and hospitalizations, after state and federal health officials have made vaccination in nursing homes one of their top priorities. Each of the three vaccines currently available – manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson – has received emergency use authorization from the FDA in response to the pandemic.
But none of the vaccines have been formally approved yet – and many experts say that while mandatory vaccinations in the workplace are not new, it is unusual for employers to require a vaccine that has not received full FDA approval.
“I believe at the moment that it is unethical to require treatment that has been approved under an emergency authorization,” Mike Wasserman, a member of the California Vaccine Advisory Committee, told ABC News.
However, said Wasserman, there is nothing wrong with exposing the benefits and risks of vaccination.
“It is up to us to devote time and energy to respect, honor and value those who put their lives at risk in the past year and do everything in our power to help them make the best decision for them as individuals,” he said.
Nelson Goodin, who represents the local New Mexico official who was prosecuted for issuing a vaccine warrant for first responders, said there are legitimate reasons for requiring vaccines.
“When you have a detention center, especially where there is potential for severe spread of COVID-19, we have to keep our firefighters who are emergency medical personnel and our prison guards safe,” said Goodin, whose client directed all of the police at the center detainees, firefighters and first responders in Doña Ana County to be vaccinated. According to the guideline, employees would be dismissed if they did not provide evidence that they had received an injection or registered with the state’s COVID-19 vaccine registry.
The detention officer who opened the case against the officer did not respond to ABC News’s request for comment.
Jennifer Miller, a bioethics and assistant professor at the Yale University School of Medicine, told ABC News that because COVID-19 is a critical and urgent health problem, emergency use authorization would justify mandatory vaccination.
“We all have an ethical obligation to try to adopt behaviors that do not expose others to the risks of COVID,” said Miller. “This means that we have responsibilities as individuals to wear masks, to isolate if we are infected and possibly to be vaccinated.”
Employees at DaySpring Senior Living, a nursing home in Florida, decided to require team members to be vaccinated because they considered the quickest way to make life on the unit back to normal, said administrator Douglas Adkins. For the time being, he said, the team responded favorably; only one employee resigned after the mandate was issued.
“Making the vaccine mandatory was absolutely the right decision,” said Adkins, calling it a “clear solution” to the challenges of a long and exhausting year.
Dorit Reiss, a professor at the Hastings School of Law at the University of California, San Francisco, is researching legal and policy issues related to vaccines. She told ABC News that, given the risks of the virus spreading in congregational settings, such as nursing homes and correctional facilities, it is reasonable for employers to require employees to receive a coronavirus vaccine.
“The team has a duty to do everything in their power to avoid bringing COVID into the workplace,” said Reiss.
At the same time, said Reiss, “we also have to remember that those who refuse the vaccine are not anti-vaccine activists; they are people who have been under enormous pressure for more than a year and are just scared.”
That was the situation with Bonnie Jacobson, 34, who was fired last month from her job as a waitress in New York after expressing concern about getting the vaccine before research on its effects on fertility was completed.
“I want to make it clear: I’m not an antivaxxer,” said Jacobson, who is considering starting a family, to “Good Morning America”. “I just need more research to get out.”
But lawyer Matt Murphy, an ABC News contributor, said employers have the right to impose the vaccine on employees.
“Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, as long as they do not request information from an employee, it is legal to require the vaccine,” he said.
However, said Murphy, “I think we are going to see endless disputes over this issue.”
“Everything related to COVID is a mess,” he said. “I think this will go on for years.”
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