Some health workers are hesitant to receive coronavirus vaccinations, but hospital CEOs told CNBC on Thursday that they expect attitudes to change after a higher percentage of workers are immunized.
“I think soon everyone will want to take it,” said Will Ferniany, CEO of UAB Health System in Alabama, of “Squawk on the Street.” “About 60% are eager to take it and want to know as soon as possible,” he said, referring to an employee survey. “Twenty percent want to take it, but are cautious, and 20% are very skeptical about using it.”
UAB Hospital was scheduled to begin offering injections to health professionals on Thursday after receiving 10,725 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine earlier in the week. The first vaccinations in the US outside of clinical trials took place Monday, just days after the Food and Drug Administration cleared emergency use.
Ferniany said some workers’ reluctance to take the vaccine was not surprising. “But I think when they see what is happening to their friends and as this is being rolled out – and the vaccine has been rolled out very smoothly in Alabama – I think almost everyone” wants to receive the injections, “he said.
The multiple hospital system, which is based in Birmingham, Alabama, cannot make vaccination against Covid-19 mandatory because the vaccine is only approved for emergencies, Ferniany said. However, he said workers should be vaccinated against the seasonal flu. Last year, about 52% of Americans who were at least six months old received the flu vaccine.
“But we’ve provided a significant amount of information to our contributors, FAQs, Zoom forums for everyone. I believe they will accept that information if they are trained,” Ferniany said of the Covid vaccine.
Dr. Marc Boom, CEO of Houston Methodist in Texas, told CNBC that more than 11,000 of his employees have signed up to take the vaccine. “There is a large percentage of our population running here,” he said, adding that it provides comfort to health workers who have witnessed the devastation of the pandemic up close. “There was so much relief and so much hope with the arrival of the vaccine,” he said on “Squawk on the Street.”
However, Boom said, “There is a whole different group taking a wait and see approach” in the eight-hospital system, which is also part of the sprawling Texas Medical Center.
Like Ferniany, Boom said that additional training and the experience of other employees should ensure that more employees feel comfortable receiving the new vaccine. “We’ve made the flu vaccine mandatory for over 15 years and we always get a full vaccination. We will get there eventually,” even if it takes a while, Boom said.
The rollout of the Covid vaccine this week comes at a critical time in the US coronavirus epidemic. According to a CNBC analysis of data collected by Johns Hopkins University, the seven-day average of new infections in the country is at a record high of 215,729. The daily deaths are also at a record, 2570, based on a seven-day average.
In Texas, where hospitalizations have remained steady over the past week, Boom said more rural parts of the state are now being hit harder compared to the wave earlier this summer.
Hospital admissions for Covid patients in Alabama are at an all-time high, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which is run by journalists from The Atlantic. While Ferniany complimented the state’s governor, Republican Kay Ivey, for extending his mask mandate, he said coronavirus cases are increasing “rapidly”. “Some of our rural hospitals that we manage, nearly 50% of their hospital now has Covid patients,” said Ferniany.