In one of the first signs of an escalating showdown between healthcare providers and vaccine-resistant employees, Kaiser Permanente has suspended more than 2,000 workers who have chosen not to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The Oakland-based health care provider is not alone in putting workers who are shunning the vaccine on leave without pay. Across California, hospitals have told workers who have refused a shot to stop showing up to work in recent days. Suspended workers can’t return unless they get jabbed in the coming weeks.
The crackdown throughout California comes as a state health order said workers at hospitals, dialysis clinics, surgery centers and other health care settings needed to have received either one Johnson & Johnson shot or two Pfizer or Moderna shots by the end of September. The order allowed for limited religious and medical exemptions.
“More than 92 percent of our employees have been vaccinated — and the number continues to grow,” Kaiser said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. “As of October 4, just over 2,200 have not responded to our vaccine requirement, and have been put on unpaid administrative leave across the country.”
Kaiser did not say how many of its suspended workers are in Southern California or what jobs they held. The healthcare provider announced its own vaccine requirement for employees in early August and had given them until the state’s Sept. 30 deadline to get their shots.
Kaiser said those who have been placed on leave have until Dec. 1 to get vaccinated to be able to return to work. If they choose not to, they will be terminated.
“We hope none of our employees will choose to leave their jobs rather than be vaccinated, but we won’t know with certainty until then,” Kaiser said. “We will continue to work with this group of employees to allay concerns and educate them about the vaccines, their benefits, and risks.”
President Joe Biden announced a vaccine mandate for health care facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid reimbursements, and, according to ABC News, health care workers across the country are “being fired or suspended in droves” for not complying.
Still, the vast majority of health care workers have received shots, with many championing the vaccines as the best way to slow the deadly force of a pandemic that has battered the world for nearly two years. The mandates appear to be prompting people who had not gotten inoculated to get a shot.
In its statement, Kaiser said its vaccination rate among employees and physicians was just 78% in early August when the mandate was announced.
Back in July, in an appearance at Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center, Gov. Gavin Newsom originally announced the state’s health care workers must be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing for COVID-19. At the time, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents more than 15,000 health care workers at hospitals, nursing homes and medical clinics in California, praised the decision.
But as the highly infectious delta variant surged across the state, filling up hospitals especially throughout the Central Valley, the state eliminated the test-out option for health care workers. Representatives from the California Nurses Association were not immediately available Tuesday to comment on the suspension of unvaccinated workers.
Monica Gandhi, a UCSF infectious disease expert, supports the mandate. “It should be absolutely mandatory to be vaccinated,” she said. “I see very few exceptions.”
And, she said, early evidence points to the fact that when people face a deadline, many get a shot, including Golden State Warriors forward Andrew Wiggins, who risked missing the NBA team’s home games at the Chase Center in San Francisco until he relented and got a Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“It was not like you just lost your job” suddenly, she said. “There was a lead up to it.”
Source: Orange County Register
Be First to Comment