As of Friday, March 12, only 54.4% of the more than 12,000 long-term workers in the state received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to Molly Howell, North Dakota’s immunization program manager.
Meanwhile, more than 90% of nursing home residents received at least one injection – probably the catalyst for the sharp drop in COVID-19 infections at state facilities.
There are several reasons for the lack of dissemination of the vaccine among workers, Howell said.
Many resisters are concerned about the safety of the vaccines or how quickly they have been developed, Howell said. These fears are unfounded, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which notes that approved vaccines meet “rigorous scientific standards for safety, efficacy and quality of manufacture”.
Given their constant exposure to vulnerable facilities, many employees have already hired and beat COVID-19, making some believe they don’t need the vaccine. Howell said that those who survive the virus gain some degree of immunity to it, but scientists are not sure how long the immunity lasts and some cases of reinfection have occurred.
Howell said he heard from long-term care workers that workers are frustrated because they need to continue wearing protective equipment and conducting COVID-19 tests, despite the low infection rate at the facility. Although several regulations have been loosened in the past few weeks, some employees believe that nothing would change in their workplace, even if they received the vaccine.
The relative youth of working women in nursing homes means that they are likely to reflect more on the general population of North Dakota than any other group that was given priority during the vaccine’s launch in the state, Howell said.
The hesitation of many workers in receiving their vaccines may foreshadow the difficulties in getting some young North Dakotans on board with vaccines as they become more widely available, she said. Older residents, like those living in nursing homes, are easier to convince because they are more susceptible to suffering a serious COVID-19 disease and many of them remember firsthand the vaccine-induced eradication of other communicable diseases, like polio.
Howell believes that educating more workers about vaccines and dispelling misinformation will be the key to changing unbelieving minds. She said the state Department of Health and North Dakota State University have teamed up to distribute educational materials and meet with people in the long-term care industry.
Some individual facilities have taken a different approach, offering incentives to workers who do the injection. One facility promised three extra days off for vaccinated employees, while another is handing out $ 100 gift cards, said Shelly Peterson, president of the North Dakota Long Term Care Association.
But perhaps the best driver of increased vaccination among workers is time. In the past three weeks, about 6.5% of asylum workers in the state sought a vaccine.
Some of the early skeptics are beginning to change because they are recognizing that the vaccine has had no adverse effects on their co-workers, agreed Howell and Peterson.
“It will only take time, encouragement and assurance that we are not seeing negative impacts from those who received the vaccine and, in fact, we are seeing some positive results,” said Peterson.
North Dakota is a national leader in the distribution of vaccines, with almost a quarter of residents having received at least one dose.