Susan, an Alaska-based critical care nurse, has been exposed to Covid-19 several times and has seen dozens of people die from the disease. But he did not want to receive the vaccine when he learned it would soon be available.
“I’m not anti-vaxxer, I have all the vaccines known to man, my flu shot, I always aim right there, on October 1st, they sting me,” said Susan, who didn’t want to give his last name for fear of reprisals. “But for this one, why should I be a guinea pig?”
The two authorized vaccines, manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, are safe according to leading experts and clinical trials (on the one hand, they do not contain live viruses and therefore cannot give a person to Covid) and, with tens of thousands of patients, have had an approximate 95% efficacy. But across the country, health workers with the first access to the vaccine reject it.
Denial rates (up to 40% of front-line workers in Los Angeles County, 60% of care home workers in Ohio) have caused concern and, in some cases, embarrassment. But the ultimate failure could be to lay off those figures at a critical time in the U.S. vaccination campaign.
Dr. Whitney Robinson, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, told the Guardian if these first figures of health care workers are not addressed: “It could mean that after all this work, after all this sacrifice, we could be seeing outbreaks. for years, not just in 2021, maybe in 2022, maybe in 2023 “.
Vaccination hesitation is common: 29% of health workers said they were hesitant, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation published last month. And it’s not exclusive to the United States – up to 40% of UK healthcare workers could refuse the vaccine, the National Care Association said in mid-December.
The figures coming from hospitals and care homes are unique in that they give a more specific picture of who denies the vaccine and why. Once vaccines are available to the general public, patterns will be more difficult to identify because the United States does not have a centralized system for tracking vaccinations.
“If we don’t understand the patterns of who is not vaccinated, it will be difficult to predict where the outbreaks may arise and to what extent they may spread,” Robinson said.
It will also leave low-funded public health agencies struggling to identify and respond to community hesitation.
“We can’t just overturn someone’s decisions and say, because that’s their personal decision,” Robinson said. “Because it’s not just his personal decision, it’s an infectious disease. As long as we have coronavirus bags anywhere in the world, until we have a massive global vaccine, it is a threat. ”
Some employers and unions see the figures as what they are: an alarm that needs an answer.
In New York City, the fire union found last month that 55% of 2,000 firefighters surveyed said they would not get the vaccine.
But Covid cases are creeping into the FDNY. Twelve members died and more than 600 were on sick leave by the end of December.
Thus, the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA), Andrew Ansbro, collected questions from some of the approximately 8,200 firefighters his union represents. A virologist friend had helped Ansbro shape the union’s response to Covid-19 and answered his questions in a recorded video. The 50-minute video has now been viewed about 2,000 times.
“In fact, I received a couple of dozen calls and messages from members saying I was changing my mind,” said Ansbro, who was vaccinated Dec. 29. “I think the vaccination figures will definitely be over 45%.”
He said people were worried about the novelty of the vaccine, had read misinformation online and were worried about the long-term effects. In other job surveys, people have shared concerns about how it might affect fertility or pregnant women. Some health workers infected with Covid do not believe it is necessary as long as they continue to have antibodies.
Each of these questions can be answered. And national surveys have shown that, in general, vaccine vaccination is declining.
But these surveys also suggest that action still needs to be taken to address populations most likely to be suspicious because of the country’s history of medical abuse.
Recent polls show that blacks are the ones who are most hesitant to get vaccinated. In mid-November, 83% of Asian Americans said they would get the vaccine if it was made available that day. This sentiment was shared by 63% of Hispanics, 61% of whites, but only 42% of blacks, according to a Pew Research report.
Dr. Nikhila Juvvadi, head of clinic at Loretto Hospital in Chicago, told NPR that talks with hesitant staff revealed that mistrust was a problem among African American and Latino workers.
He said people specifically mentioned the Tuskegee study, when federal health officials allowed hundreds of black men with sexually transmitted diseases not to be treated to study the progression of the disease. The study lasted from 1932 to 1972.
“I’ve heard Tuskegee more times than I can count over the last month, and, you know, it’s a valid and valid concern,” Juvvadi said.
Juvvadi, who administered vaccines at the hospital, said individualized conversations to validate those concerns and answer questions had helped people become more comfortable with the vaccine.
Vaccination of vaccines in health care workers has also put pressure on health systems that try to get doses to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
Georgia Public Health Commissioner Kathleen Toomey announced last week that the state would extend access to the vaccine to adults age 65 and older and first aid because health workers did not want to take it.
Dr. Toomey said that while hundreds of health workers were on waiting lists to get the vaccine in downtown Atlanta, in rural areas the vaccine “was literally sitting in the freezers” because health workers there didn’t they wanted to take her.
At one of Texas ’hospitals hardest hit by the virus, Renaissance Doctors Hospital in Rio GrandeValley, workers contacted EMT, paramedics and out-of-hospital medical workers to distribute the remaining vaccines because of their limited service life.
Susan, the Alaska nurse, said her preference would be for her parents to get the vaccine first because they are more vulnerable.
He has made peace with the vaccine and plans to get it the next time it is offered. She said she was finally convinced to get it after talking to other health professionals who did not rule out her concerns and listened to her questions.
Now, however, there is another obstacle. Susan has twice been vaccinated because of logistics. He is currently on a temporary crisis assignment in rural Texas and the trip meant the two times he was offered the vaccine; he would be in a different state when it came time to take the second dose. Susan said, “I feel terrible I said no.”