More health care workers refuse to get COVID-19 vaccine

• Despite the surging new coronavirus cases in the US, large numbers of health care professionals are reportedly refusing to get the Covid-19 vaccine.
• Frontline workers have been prioritized as early recipients of the vaccine along with the elderly and those with medical conditions that are at a higher risk of developing severe illness.
• Health care workers cited political reasons, the minority groups’ mistrust of vaccinations and safety concerns as the reasons for refusal.

Health care professionals are the priority to receive the coronavirus vaccine — but a large number across the US are refusing to do so. 

Gov. Mike DeWine disclosed last week that nearly 60 percent of the nursing home workers in Ohio have opted not to get vaccinated. 

More than fifty percent of EMS workers in New York City have been skeptical about the vaccine, The New York Post reported in December.

Now, even California and Texas are also reporting a high rate of health care worker refusals despite the increasing number of coronavirus cases and deaths in their states.

About half of front-line workers in Riverside County in the Golden State declined to receive the drug, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Over 50 percent of health care workers from St. Elizabeth Community Hospital in California who were eligible to get vaccinated, did not.

Last week, a doctor at Houston Memorial Medical Center in Texas told NPR that nearly 50% of the nurses in the hospital would refuse to get the vaccine, citing political reasons — the same reason cited by the nurses in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey.

The survey revealed that 29 percent of health workers were “vaccine hesitant,” the Los Angeles Times reported. 

Health workers said that they were concerned about how politics influenced the creation of the vaccine, among other reasons, hence questioning its safety.

A California pregnant nurse opted to not take the shot because she and her other co-workers believe they don’t need it to make it through the pandemic. 

“I feel people think, ‘I can still make it until this ends without getting the vaccine,’” April Lu, a 31-year-old nurse at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, told the newspaper. 

Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch told the Times that having a high percentage of people refusing the vaccine among not just health care workers, but the general population, could be a cause of concern.

“Our ability as a society to get back to a higher level of functioning depends on having as many people protected as possible,” said Lipsitch.

Source: New York Post