Nearly 60 medical groups including American Medical Association sign joint statement calling on employers to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for healthcare workers
- In a joint statement on Monday, 57 medical groups called on employers to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for all health care workers
- The groups say that requiring health workers to get vaccinated will protect patients as well as vulnerable groups like the immunocompromised
- Houston Methodist was the first health system to make vaccines mandatory earlier this year and has since been joined by dozens of others
- Daily vaccinations have fallen to less than 500,000 per day while daily cases have increased by 291% in three weeks from 13,305 to 52,116
Dozens of medical groups are calling on employers to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for all health care workers.
In a joint statement published on Monday, 57 organizations – including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the National League for Nursing -noted the rise in case in the U.S. due to the Indian ‘Delta’ variant spreading among unvaccinated populations.
‘We call for all health care and long-term care employers to require their employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
‘The health and safety of U.S. workers, families, communities, and the nation depends on it.’
The groups add that mandating vaccines will help protect not only patients but also vulnerable people, including unvaccinated children and the immunocompromised.
It comes as several health systems across the country mandate that their staff members get vaccinated or risk being fired.
In a joint statement on Monday, 57 medical groups called on employers to make COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for all health care workers. Pictured:
Several experts and institutions have issued statements supporting that all health workers get vaccinated, but the joint statement is the largest to date.
‘While we recognize some workers cannot be vaccinated because of identified medical reasons and should be exempted from a mandate, they constitute a small minority of all workers,’ the statement read.
‘Employers should consider any applicable state laws on a case-by-case basis.’
The statement represents the first time that many of these groups have called for a mandate as the pace of vaccinations falls from 3.5 million per day in April to just 500,000 per day in July.
Meanwhile, the U.S. recorded 15,711 new cases with a seven-day rolling average of 52,116, which is a 291 percent increase from the 13,305 average recorded three weeks ago, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of Johns Hopkins data.
The federal government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled in December 2020 that employers could legally set vaccine requirements for their workforce.
The Houston Methodist hospital system in Texas became the first in the U.S. to set a coronavirus vaccine requirement in April.
More than 150 employees resigned or were fired in late June after they refused to get the vaccine.
Since then several large academic centers, such as NewYork-Presbyterian and Yale New Haven, and large chains such as Trinity Health have imposed vaccine mandates.
New York City will also be requiring all health care workers at city-run hospitals to get vaccinated or undergo weekly testing.
However, many medical workers remain reluctant to get vaccinated.
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), only 58.4 percent of nursing home workers are fully vaccinated.
This is about the same as the overall percentage of fully vaccinated adults in the U.S. but significantly lower than the 81.3 percent of residents who are vaccinated.
A analysis from WebMD and Medscape Medical News found one in four hospital workers who have direct contact with patients were unvaccinated by the end of May.
Dr Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist of the University of Pennsylvania, told The Washington Post, said that boosting uptake among health care workers might boost numbers in the overall general population.
‘Despite everything – cajoling, making access readily available at any pharmacy, making it free, having the president plead – all of this hasn’t really moved the needle very much in the nation,’ he said.
‘One of the things that resonated with people is: “Look, we’re the medical community. This is a health problem.” We need to lead – and we need to have the courage of our convictions.’
