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LONG ISLAND, NY – Long after graduating from nursing school, Rachel H. continued her education, always staying abreast of the latest studies and clinical trials in the medical field. It doesn’t matter if the material is about a controversial cutting edge medical treatment or a new drug. She has been following the progress of the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, and she is unwilling to roll up her sleeve so soon due to concerns about long-term effects, despite fear of contracting COVID-19.
“There’s no data on that. You’re going to be the data – that’s the only thing,” said Rachel, a Suffolk County resident who works at an outpatient mental health facility. She declined to be identified for confidentiality reasons. “It’s a fear that everyone has. You get [COVID-19] and you get sick. “
The lack of data on the Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna vaccine concerns Rachel, so she plans to give more time to vaccine development and she may consider the next version of the vaccine from Johnson & Johnson as she has a friend involved in the vaccine development. clinical. trial.
“I’d be more open to it because it’s more traditional,” she said, noting that Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine is similar to the flu vaccine, which is adjusted every year to fight a disease. different strain of influenza.
Pfizer’s Phase 3 vaccine trial, which had 43,448 participants, was “well tolerated and demonstrated 95% vaccine efficacy against COVID-19,” the company said in a press release last month.
Another concern for Rachel is that the vaccines currently available in the United States use mRNA technology, which does not contain live or weakened virus, but instead stimulates the body to create a protein to increase immunity, according to the researchers. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. . She still views the vaccines as experimental because they were rolled out so quickly under emergency Federal Drug Administration approvals, but she says that doesn’t mean they aren’t safe.
“It’s something that no one has really understood before, so we don’t know what the long term effects are,” she said.
Health experts are sounding the alarm over the number of health workers refusing to be vaccinated.
“For me, it is extremely important that we provide the correct information to healthcare workers and that we quickly get rid of myths and misinformation,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Vaccination and Respiratory Disease. . Hill.
In a Los Angeles Times report, less than half of hospital workers eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at St. Elizabeth’s Community Hospital in Tehema County, Calif. Were ready to take it once. Free. At Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, Calif., One in five staff members have refused the vaccine.
April Wu, a 31-year-old nurse working at Providence Holy Cross, told The Times that she refused the vaccine because she was six months pregnant and was not sure about the safety of the vaccine because it there had been no clinical trials in pregnant women. .
“I choose the risk – the risk of having COVID, or the stranger’s risk of having the vaccine,” Wu told The Times. “I think I choose COVID. I can control this and prevent it by wearing masks, although I’m not 100% sure.”
Dr Stephen Noble, a 43-year-old cardiothoractic surgeon in Portland, OR, told The Associated Press he is also postponing the vaccine.
“I don’t think anyone wants to be a guinea pig,” he said. “At the end of the day, as a scientist, I just want to see what the data shows. And show me all the data.”
In New York, more than half of EMS workers were skeptical about taking the vaccine, according to a New York Post report citing alarming rates of decline in vaccination by hospital staff across the United States
Government and hospital response to the dilemma
In his daily press briefing updating members of the media on the pandemic last Friday, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that vaccination rates among hospital workers vary by region of the state, with a higher number trending to be present in New York. Vaccine decline rates also vary, but are highest outside the metro area with the highest decline rate in the Mid-Hudson region, which stood at 28%, according to Cuomo.
On Long Island, 60 percent of hospital staff have been vaccinated, while only about 13 percent have refused to be vaccinated. One of the lowest vaccination rates for hospital staff was found at St. Catherine of Siena in Smithtown, where only 34% of its staff were vaccinated.
Of the 130,000 people working in “skilled nursing” facilities in the state, 32 percent refused to be vaccinated when given the opportunity, Cuomo said Monday, according to the New York Times. .
A request for a breakdown of the combinations by hospital was not immediately available from the Department of Health or Cuomo’s office.
Cuomo compared frontline nurses who refuse the vaccine and continue to care for the public to “super-spreaders,” or people who infect many others with the coronavirus through close contact.
“No one wants to go to the hospital and be treated by a nurse with COVID. You don’t help people that way,” he said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that healthcare workers be vaccinated and prioritize those on the front line, such as emergency room and intensive care nurses, but taking the vaccine is not compulsory for these workers. Questions soliciting requests for comment and clarification from local hospital press offices have gone largely unanswered about how many hospital staff are withdrawing from the vaccination process.
Rosemary Gomez, spokesperson for St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, part of Long Island Catholic Health Systems and one of the hardest hit hospitals last spring, declined to comment for the story.
Northwell Health spokesperson Jason Molinet gave insight that the declination rate has been monitored by the state and so far Northwell, which is the island’s largest health system , vaccinated more than 30,000 employees.
Lisa Greiner, a spokesperson for NYU Winthrop in Mineola, said the healthcare system uses “lifelong education to strongly encourage employees to get vaccinated.”
Cynthia Ruf, vice president of branding and stakeholder relations for the Long Island Community Hospital in East Patchogue, also did not make any specific comments regarding the removal of employees from the vaccination process, although that she said the hospital had had “great success” in administering the first round of doses to employees. “We haven’t wasted any vaccines and we already have employees signing up for our next distribution,” she said in an email.
Officials at Stony Brook Medicine Hospital, which includes its flagship teaching hospital as well as Stony Brook Hospital Southampton and Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport, are encouraging all eligible employees to be vaccinated, a spokesperson.
Like NYU Winthrop, the system provides education to employees about the vaccine and it has “doctors on hand to answer any questions employees may have about the vaccine,” according to a statement from Stony Brook Medicine. The statement continued to strengthen employee adherence to CDC guidelines, such as “the appropriate and consistent use” of personal protective equipment and hand hygiene to “minimize the risk of contagion and spread.”
Requests for comment from 1199 SEIU Healthcare Workers East, the largest collective bargaining unit representing most hospitals on Long Island, were not answered. Just before the person’s vaccination in the United States – a nurse at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park – the union, on December 12, urged workers to take the vaccine, calling it “a critical step forward for help protect members “. health and end the devastating pandemic that has ravaged our nation. ”
A request for comment from the union representing workers at the Stony Brook Teaching Hospital Medical Center was also unanswered.
Variation of vaccines takes a chance for some, others a personal choice
Wu told the Los Angeles Times that she was going to take her chances and rely on her PPE and relayed that her colleagues were also taking their chances by withdrawing from the vaccination process. “I feel like people are thinking, ‘I can still do this until this ends without getting the vaccine,” she told a Times reporter.
Rachel H. said she worked during the pandemic, working from home, and then as restrictions relaxed, returning to the office without contracting COVID-19. When asked if she was afraid of contracting the virus, she admitted that she was.
“Of course, though, I thought about that and I’m not sure the vaccine will protect me,” he said.
Rachel said she has heard people in the community criticize frontline healthcare workers for not taking the vaccine and this frustrates her because she realizes the workers are professionals with more knowledge. in medicine and vaccine deployment.
“I say, ‘they have their reasons,’” she said.
She disagrees with any idea that healthcare workers will spread if they don’t take the vaccine because she doesn’t think they would show up to work with symptoms and put their patients at risk. However, she understands the need to vaccinate as many people as possible, but stresses that this is their personal preference.
“They still have a say in what goes into their body,” she said.
Although she noted that if she was a frontline worker, she might think differently about taking the vaccine. But for now, it’s a personal choice that is up to each employee and everyone is going to have a different opinion on it, she said.
“I think once again the vaccines will come out, more people in the health care sector will be willing to take them,” she said.
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