How COVID-19 vaccination is accelerating in the United States, a hospital in the hard-hit California says its team has achieved collective immunity. In December, when the pandemic was at its peak in the state, UC Davis Medical Center had 231 employees out because of COVID-19.
As of Wednesday, that number was just 10.
More than 56 million doses of vaccines have been administered in the United States so far, although the country is still a long way from the collective immunity that scientists say the country needs to be safe. At UC Davis, however, more than 90% of the team received at least the first chance – and reached that limit.
UC Davis nurse Chasity Whitmer was giving birth to babies at the height of the pandemic. When it came time to be vaccinated, she told David Begnaud of CBS News that she hesitated.
“If I got the vaccine, would I get COVID? What would be my side effects? How long would that last? Whitmer remembers asking himself.
But with a husband who stays at home and takes care of the children, Whitmer told CBS News what changed her mind.
“I was mentoring a nurse in charge of care at my unit and we were kind of having an argument,” she said. “What would happen if we had COVID? We wouldn’t be able to work. We wouldn’t have any income, we wouldn’t have health insurance. So we kind of talked to each other and increased our confidence and positioned ourselves online to get vaccinated.”
She and more than 90% of the staff at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento received at least one dose of the vaccine.
That number is 100% among emergency doctors at the hospital, said Dr. Nate Kuppermann, director of the emergency department.
Kuppermann said that vaccinating most employees changed their ability to work in the emergency room and that it looked like “that pressure has been lifted from our shoulders”.
“So, before the vaccine was released, on any given day, we would have between 100, 150 employees who were sick with COVID and called to say they weren’t coming,” he said. “And now I think it’s just one digit. I mean, there are less than 10.”
It’s not just UC Davis’ healthcare system – across the University of California’s Healthcare System, cases among the healthcare team have dropped from 431 a week to 171 a week. With fewer sick employees, the pressure on healthcare professionals has also eased.
Acting Director of Health Services for Employees, Anne Tompkins, said the UC Davis data and people’s stories are “a testament to the vaccine really working”.
“We’ll be fine,” she said.
As for Whitmer, the nurse went from being a skeptic about the vaccine to becoming an evangelizer – a few days after receiving her second dose, Whitmer’s husband, mother, three children and grandmother tested positive for COVID-19. Only she and her grandfather did not – and they are the only two in the family who have been vaccinated.
“My husband was seriously ill with pneumonia COVID, he spent nine hours in the emergency room. My grandmother spent 25 days in the hospital with COVID pneumonia and is still recovering from oxygen, ”said Whitmer. “It is not fun to see your family members sick. It is very frightening to be a nurse, to see them become increasingly sick and go to the hospital, or stay at home.”
Whitmer said reliving that thrilled her, because she didn’t know if her husband “would be one of those who would live or die.“
A CBS News staff member who was shooting a video inside UC Davis said it was the most calm and quiet hospital he had visited in months.
And although the team is confident that everyone is protected by the vaccine, they still require masks and social distance at all times.