Some health professionals are still saying no to the Covid-19 vaccine

The hesitation among health professionals worries public health officials who expected America’s frontline workers to serve as a model for others.

“Please get vaccinated,” said Anthony Fauci, who is serving as President Biden’s chief medical advisor for the Covid-19 pandemic, in a video message to healthcare professionals. “It is important to protect yourself, to protect your family, but just as important, symbolically, as health professionals, to show confidence in the vaccine so that other people in this country can do the same”.

In a survey of 1,563 respondents conducted in January by researchers from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 79% of American adults who have not yet been vaccinated say they are likely to turn to a doctor, nurse or other healthcare professional to decide whether to get a vaccine.

Meanwhile, 28% of the 128 health professionals in the Kaiser survey said they want to wait and see how the vaccine is working for others before taking it themselves. Although they were not the toughest group the foundation studied, their overwhelming influence on whether the general public would choose to receive the vaccine worries public health officials.

Research on vaccine skepticism in larger populations has shown that people have become less hesitant to see others vaccinated.

Some health professionals say they refused the injection for altruistic reasons, believing that others should give it first. Several health systems said they struggled to persuade employees to get vaccinated due to a lack of data on the impact of vaccines on pregnancy. Other health professionals say that while they want to encourage others to get vaccinated, when it comes to their own health, they are still cautious.

“When I was receiving my first injection, I asked the two nurses who administered it to me how they felt when receiving the injection. And they were on the waiting side. It scared me a little, but I went ahead, ”said Charles Smith II, chief financial officer at Vibrant Health in Kansas City, Kan.

In the clinic system where Mr. Smith works, about 30% of the team has decided not to bring the vaccine up to this point, according to Vibrant Health chief executive Patrick Sallee.

Smith said he felt uncomfortable with the speed of the process and the lack of long-term data, but news that a more transmissible virus variant was spreading made him jump. “There is an expectation that the health industry will lead other industries to say that this is safe and set an example,” he said. “I feel like I’m throwing the dice, really.”

Smith’s wife, Aniika Jackson-Smith, a dentist, said she also hesitated to get a vaccine because she thinks that not enough is known about its long-term effects. She said she finally decided to make an appointment to have her first injection in late January because she feels the responsibility, as a healthcare professional, not to discourage others from doing so.

“My mind hasn’t really changed,” she said. “But I think that in order for us to get over this, people will simply have to get the vaccine or we will be here forever.”

Heidi Arthur, director of campaign development for the Advertising Council, which has been carrying out a large-scale public service education effort on Covid-19 vaccines, said that attracting healthcare professionals on board was not originally part of the plan.

“The level of hesitation was surprising,” she said.

Instead of health professionals lining up, the Advertising Council found itself bringing together a diverse group of leaders within the industry, including Dr. Fauci, to educate other health professionals about vaccines and address their concerns.

For Susan Izzo, an adult nurse in Connecticut, her initial hesitation was because she felt her patients deserved the vaccine before she did. Ultimately, her patients persuaded her to take the injections, she said, so that she could be healthy and protect them.

“I didn’t think it was my turn, although as a health professional it was my turn. I would have willingly given up my vaccine for my 55-year-old patient who just had a lung transplant, ”she said.

Deborah Burger, president of National Nurses United, the largest nurse union in the United States, said that many nurses felt that information about vaccines released during the Trump administration was politicized and wanted to learn more so they could decide for themselves if it was safe . Education and more information, she said, are increasing acceptance among nurses.

Dawn Allen, vice president of patient care at Huron Regional Medical Center in South Dakota, said that, in principle, less than 50% of her workforce chose to be vaccinated. After sitting down with the team to answer her questions, particularly on infertility issues, she said they are up to 76% of the team choosing to be vaccinated over a two-week period.

Even so, some nurses say they have no intention of being vaccinated.

Cleon Charles, an itinerant nurse who has worked at critical points in Covid-19 during the pandemic, said she would never get the vaccine and discouraged her daughters and parents from taking it, even though she herself had Covid-19.

She cited a general distrust of the pharmaceutical industry, among other concerns, and the death of baseball legend Hank Aaron, who publicly received the Covid-19 vaccine in early January. Medical officials say the baseball legend died of natural causes, but his death was assumed by anti-vaccination leaders, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who called the death “part of a wave of suspicious deaths among the elderly after the administration of # COVID #vaccines ”, on Twitter.

“I don’t want this,” said Charles. “I’ll take my chances and my vitamins.”

Write to Julie Wernau at [email protected]