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Personal Care Assistant Riza Green receives a COVID-19 vaccine at the Carefield Assisted Living Facility in Castro Valley on February 3, 2021. Photo by Anne Wernikoff, CalMatters.
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California today issued the country’s first ordinance requiring COVID-19 vaccination for healthcare workers, allowing only rare religious or medical exemptions.
Employees in hospitals, nursing homes, doctor’s offices, clinics and other medical facilities have until September 30 to get at least one dose of the vaccination, under the new order issued by Dr Tomás J. Aragón, California Public Health Officer. In the meantime, they must either be vaccinated or undergo mandatory weekly tests, under the previous state order issued last week.
California also ordered visitors to hospitals, skilled nursing homes, and facilities for people with developmental disabilities to be fully immunized or test negative for COVID-19 within 72 hours. The decree applies only to interior visits and comes into force on Wednesday.
The new requirement for medical workers reinforces Governor Gavin Newsom’s decision last week to require health care workers and government employees get vaccinated or have weekly tests.
State health officials were not immediately available to explain why the requirements for healthcare workers will not take effect until the end of September.
The orders come as California – along with the rest of the nation – grapples with a wave of cases propelled by the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus, which was around86% of cases as of July 21, according to the California Department of Public Health.
“As we continue to see an increase in cases and hospitalizations due to the delta variant of COVID-19, it is important that we protect vulnerable patients in these settings,” Aragón said in a press release. “Today’s action will also ensure that healthcare workers themselves are protected. Vaccines are how we are ending this pandemic. “
The exemption for medical and religious reasons could prove problematic. California eliminated similar exemptions for childhood vaccinesbecause of overuse by many parents.
More … than 9,500 new cases of COVID-19 were reported today, a sharp increase from mid-June, when the state’s economy largely reopened and just over 1,000 daily cases were reported.
State health officials have said recent outbreaks of COVID-19 in healthcare facilities are often attributed to unvaccinated employees – even though health workers were the first to receive COVID-19 vaccines when ‘they first became available in December.
A number of health workers, including certified nursing assistants, have been surprisingly reluctant to get vaccinated.
It’s unclear how many of the hundreds of thousands of California healthcare workers remain partially or completely unvaccinated, but federal data analyzed by CalMatters provides a clue: About 23% of the nearly 500,000 hospital workers in more than 350 California hospitals had not received a single dose of vaccine as of July 23.
As a result, Kaiser Permanente and other major healthcare systems have announced their own vaccination mandates for workers. Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the California Hospital Association, an industry group, called the state order “a milestone in a long battle we face.”
About 23% of the nearly 500,000 hospital workers in more than 350 California hospitals had not received a single dose of the vaccine as of July 23.
Unions representing healthcare workers were not so supportive. Reluctant to visibly oppose the vaccine mandates of officials, one of the unions sent a vague statement similar to those released last week.
“Workers need to have a seat at the table while these decisions and their implementation are being discussed,” said Bob Schoonover, president of SEIU California and executive director of SEIU 721, which represents approximately 35,000 health workers, in a statement. press release sent by email. SEIU spokesman Mike Roth declined to give details.
But another union leader has expressed support for the state’s new, stricter mandate. “Although this order is not adopted by all of our members, it will save lives and protect the health of healthcare workers and patients who are suffering another wave of COVID-19 which is mainly spread by unvaccinated people,” Sal Roselli of the National Healthcare Workers Union said in an emailed statement.
The ordinances of other states have not been so strict. Massachusetts issued an order on Wednesday require nursing home workers to be vaccinated by Oct. 10, with exemptions only for religious or medical reasons. And Oregon announced a warrant similar to California’s original ordinance, requiring healthcare workers to be vaccinated but allowing for an alternative testing.
With just over half of California’s eligible population fully vaccinated, nearly all new cases and deaths of COVID-19 occur in unvaccinated people, state public health officials say, and hospitalizations have grown at an alarming rate.
More … than 5,500 Californians are currently hospitalized for COVID-19, with about a fifth of them requiring intensive care.
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CALmatters.org is a non-profit, non-partisan media company explaining California politics and politics.
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