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Those likely to face the problem in the first weeks of vaccine availability include hospitals and health care systems whose high-risk workers will have priority access to vaccines.
The ethical issues surrounding the mandates of Covid-19 vaccines are particularly difficult for hospitals, said Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law.
“The hospital is there to heal,” he says. “They have a mandate to protect all of their staff and all of their patients, and someone certainly has the right to freedom and autonomy – but they don’t have the right to expose others to dangerous infections. .
The two vaccines currently under FDA review, from Moderna and Pfizer, have been shown to be over 90% effective in late-stage human studies in tens of thousands of people, without serious side effects. They are ready for emergency clearance within a year of their creation – a record achievement made possible by accelerating the normal development schedule.
But hospitals and health systems have so far seen a lukewarm response to vaccines among their workers. National Nurses United, the largest nurses union in the country, is fighting against any vaccine mandate until detailed data from the Moderna and Pfizer trials are publicly available.
“We believe it will be an experimental vaccine for a while,” said Michelle Mahon, a union representative. She added that nurses are generally not skeptical of vaccines – and that last year, more than 92% of registered nurses were vaccinated against seasonal flu.
Another major union of healthcare workers, SEIU-United Workers West, has been insisting for months that Covid-19 vaccines remain voluntary. But the group says its members should always be given priority to access the shots.
A representative of the Federation of American Hospitals said none of its members – all for-profit health systems – made vaccination mandatory at this point. A hospital lobbyist told POLITICO that some health systems are considering requiring their employees to receive vaccines only after they have obtained full FDA approval.
These plans could change if health workers become more comfortable with vaccines over time. Americans’ general confidence and willingness to get Covid-19 vaccines has grown since Moderna and Pfizer released the final results of their vaccine trials last month.
According to a Gallup poll released in November, around 60% of U.S. residents would be ready to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, up from 50% in September.
Engaging health workers in the Covid-19 vaccination will be crucial in increasing acceptance of vaccines, a senior official from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.
“I know the person most people listen to the most is their health care provider,” said Jay Butler, CDC deputy director for infectious diseases. “We want to make sure that information is provided to suppliers as quickly as possible.”
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