As California was considered the national “epicenter” of the COVID-19 pandemic, several key frontline workers prioritized in state and local vaccination plans refused to take the initiative.
“So many frontline workers in Riverside County have declined the vaccine – estimated at 50% – that the hospital and government officials have come together to define the best strategy for distributing unused doses, said Public Health Director Kim Saruwatari of according to The Los Angeles Times.
Between 20% to 40% of frontline employees in Los Angeles County did not get the vaccine when it was first offered. More than half of the 700 qualified staff at a hospital in Tehama County made the same decision, resulting in 200 doses being returned to the health department.
“They returned the vaccines to us and we quickly started to take them out and use them,” said Dr. Richard Wickenheiser, Tehama County health officer.
Although unused doses in hospitals in Tehama County are distributed to the next group of eligible individuals, the Times said it is “unclear” what happens in other areas. “State guidance allows hospitals to offer the vaccine to low-priority people if frontline employees have already received the vaccine,” said the report.
The Times cited several public health experts, hospital officials and employees who cited several reasons for skepticism, including pregnancy, lack of confidence in the federal government, politicization of the virus and concerns about long-term side effects.
They are frontline workers with priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine, but they refuse to take it.https: //t.co/yDtTh6ccq2
– Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 31, 2020
“I feel that the public’s perception of healthcare professionals is incorrect,” said Nicholas Ruiz, an office assistant at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, California. “They may think that we are all informed of all this. They may think that because we work in this environment. “
“But I know that there are a lot of people who have the same mentality of the public and are still afraid to achieve that,” he added.
Nursing home employees are also hesitant, as managers and employees interviewed by the Times estimate that about 25% of employees “expressed reluctance to get the vaccine”.
As the Times reports:
The consequences are potentially dire: if few people are vaccinated, the pandemic will spread indefinitely, leading to future outbreaks, excessive pressure on the health system and ongoing economic consequences. …
To persuade reluctant workers, many hospitals are using instructional videos and interactive webinars that show employees being vaccinated. At an Orange County hospital, Anthony Wilkinson, an intensive nurse who cares for patients with coronavirus, said he had coworkers who “have lost faith in the big pharmaceutical companies and even the CDC.”
Officials at UCLA Health, which comprises four hospitals on two campuses, said that “there may be hesitation in vaccines in our workforce”. However, they did not provide data indicating how many of the more than 37,000 employees rejected the vaccine. As of Tuesday, 7,300 employees have been vaccinated.
“We are not asking employees to immediately decide whether to receive the vaccine,” UCLA Health said in a statement. “We want to give the vaccines offered adequate time to make a decision and we hope that staff will continue to understand that the benefits of vaccination clearly outweigh the risks.”
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