Susan, an Alaskan intensive care nurse, has been exposed to Covid-19 several times and has seen many people die from the disease. But she did not want to be vaccinated when she learned that she would soon be available.
“I am not anti-xxx, I have all the vaccines known to man, my flu vaccine, I always sign up right there, October 1st, give me an injection,” said Susan, who declined to give her last name for fear of retaliation . “But for this one, why do I have to be a guinea pig?”
The two authorized vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, are safe according to leading experts and clinical tests – on the one hand, they do not contain live viruses and therefore cannot provide Covid to a person – and with tens of thousands of patients, they have been around 95% effective. But across the country, health professionals with the first access to the vaccine are refusing.
Refusal rates – up to 40% of frontline workers in Los Angeles County, 60% of homeworkers in Ohio – generated concern and, in some cases, shame. But the ultimate failure could be to discard those numbers at a critical time in the United States’ vaccination campaign.
Dr. Whitney Robinson, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, told the Guardian if those first numbers from health care professionals are not addressed: “It could mean that after all this work, after all this sacrifice, we could still seeing outbreaks for years, not just 2021, maybe 2022, maybe 2023. ”
Vaccine hesitation is common – 29% of health professionals said they were hesitant about the vaccine, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey published last month. And it is not exclusive to the US – up to 40% of healthcare professionals in the UK may refuse to receive the vaccine, the National Care Association said in mid-December.
The numbers from hospitals and nursing homes are unique, as they provide a more specific picture of who is refusing the vaccine and why. Once vaccines are available to the general public, standards will be more difficult to identify because the United States does not have a centralized system for tracking vaccinations.
“If we do not understand the patterns of those who are not vaccinated, it will be difficult to predict where outbreaks may arise and how far they may spread,” said Robinson.
This will also leave underfunded public health agencies struggling to identify and respond to hesitation in the community.
“We can’t just ignore someone’s decisions and say, well, that’s their personal decision,” said Robinson. “Because it is not just a personal decision, it is an infectious disease. As long as we have pockets of coronavirus anywhere in the world, until we have a massive global vaccination, it is a threat. “
Some employers and unions are seeing the numbers for what they really are: an alarm that needs an answer.
In New York City, the firefighters’ union found last month that 55% of the 2,000 firefighters interviewed said they would not receive the vaccine.
But Covid’s cases are going up on FDNY. Twelve members died and more than 600 were on sick leave at the end of December.
Thus, the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA), Andrew Ansbro, collected questions from some of the approximately 8,200 firefighters that his union represents. A virologist friend helped Ansbro define the union’s response to Covid-19 and answered his questions in a recorded video. The 50-minute video has been viewed about 2,000 times.
“In fact, I received a few dozen phone calls and messages from members saying they changed their mind,” said Ansbro, who was vaccinated on December 29. “I think the vaccination numbers will certainly be over 45%.”
He said people are concerned about how new the vaccine is, have read incorrect information online and are concerned about the long-term effects. In other research on workplaces, people shared concerns about how it could affect fertility or pregnant women. Some healthcare professionals infected with Covid do not think it is necessary while they still have antibodies.
Each of these questions can be answered. And national surveys have shown that, in general, vaccine hesitation is decreasing.
But these surveys also suggest that actions are still needed to address the populations most likely to be suspicious because of the country’s history of medical abuse.
Recent research shows that blacks are the most hesitant to vaccinate. In mid-November, 83% of Asian Americans said they would receive the vaccine if it was made available to them that day. That sentiment was shared by 63% of Hispanics, 61% of whites, but only 42% of blacks, according to a report by Pew Research.
Dr. Nikhila Juvvadi, clinical director at Loretto hospital in Chicago, told NPR that conversations with staff hesitant to vaccinate revealed that distrust was an issue among African American and Latino workers.
She said people specifically mentioned the Tuskegee Study, when federal health officials allowed hundreds of black men with sexually transmitted diseases to go untreated to study disease progression. The study lasted from 1932 to 1972.
“I heard Tuskegee more times than I can count in the past month – and, you know, it’s a valid, valid concern,” said Juvvadi.
Juvvadi, who administered vaccines at the hospital, said that individual conversations validating these concerns and answering questions helped people feel more comfortable with the vaccine.
The hesitation about vaccination among health professionals has also put pressure on health systems with the intention of providing doses to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
Georgia’s public health commissioner, Kathleen Toomey, announced last week that the state would expand access to the vaccine for adults 65 and older and first respondents because health professionals were refusing to take it.
Dr. Toomey said that while hundreds of health professionals were on waiting lists to receive the vaccine in the state’s urban center, Atlanta, in rural areas the vaccine was “literally stopped in freezers” because health professionals did not want to take it. over there.
At one of the Texas hospitals most affected by the virus, Doctors Hospital at Renaissance in the Rio Grande Valley, workers contacted local paramedics, paramedics and doctors to distribute the remaining vaccines because of their limited lifespan.
Susan, the nurse in Alaska, said she would prefer her parents to get the vaccine first because they are more vulnerable.
She has made peace with the vaccine and plans to take it the next time it is offered. She said she eventually convinced herself to get it after speaking with other health professionals who did not dismiss her concerns and listened to her questions.
Now, however, there is another obstacle. Susan refused the vaccine twice because of the logistics. She is currently on a temporary crisis assignment in rural Texas and the trip meant that the two times she received the vaccine, she would be in a different state when it was time to take her second dose. Susan said, “I feel terrible for saying no.”