Susan, an intensive care nurse in Alaska, has been exposed to Covid-19 multiple times and has seen dozens of people die from the disease. But she didn’t want to get the vaccination when she learned it would be available soon.
“I’m not an anti-vaxxer, I have every vaccine known to man, my flu shot, I always sign up there, October 1, prick me,” said Susan, fearing not to give her last name of retaliation. “But why do I have to be for this guinea pig?”
The two authorized vaccines, made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, are safe, according to leading experts and clinical trials – for example, they do not contain live virus and so cannot give any Covid – and with tens of thousands of patients, they have had about 95% efficacy. But across the country, health workers with initial access to the vaccine are rejecting it.
The bounce rates – up to 40% of frontline workers in Los Angeles County, 60% of nursing home workers in Ohio – have sparked concern and in some cases shame. But the ultimate failure could be that these numbers are rejected at a critical time in the US vaccination campaign.
Dr. Whitney Robinson, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, told The Guardian that if these early numbers from health workers aren’t addressed, “It could mean that after all this work, after all this sacrifice, we could see outbreaks for years to come. , not just 2021, maybe 2022, maybe 2023. “
Vaccine reluctance is common – 29% of health workers said they were reluctant to vaccinate, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey published last month. And it’s not exclusive to the US – up to 40% of healthcare providers in the UK can refuse to receive the vaccine, the National Care Association said in mid-December.
The figures from hospitals and care homes are unique because they provide a more specific picture of who refuses the vaccine and why. Once vaccines are available to the general public, patterns will be more difficult to identify because the US does not have a centralized system to track vaccinations.
“If we don’t understand the patterns of who hasn’t been vaccinated, it will be difficult to predict where outbreaks might come from and how far they might spread,” Robinson said.
It will also make underfunded public health agencies struggle to identify and respond to hesitations in the community.
“We can’t just write off someone’s decisions and say, well, that’s their personal decision,” Robinson said. “Because it’s not just their personal decision, it’s an infectious disease. As long as we have a coronavirus all over the world, until we have massive global vaccination, it’s a threat. “
Some employers and unions see the numbers for what they are: an alarm that needs to be answered.
In New York City, the Fire Department found last month that 55% of the 2,000 firefighters surveyed said they would not receive the vaccine.
But Covid cases are on the rise with the FDNY. Twelve members have died and more than 600 were on medical leave at the end of December.
So the president of the Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA), Andrew Ansbro, collected questions from some of the roughly 8,200 firefighters his union represents. A friend of a virologist had helped Ansbro shape the union’s response to Covid-19 and answered their questions in a recorded video. The 50 minute video has now been viewed approximately 2,000 times.
“I’ve received a few dozen phone calls and messages from members saying they had changed their minds,” said Ansbro, who was vaccinated on Dec. 29. “I think vaccination rates will certainly be higher than 45%.”
He said people were concerned about how new the vaccine was, read misinformation online, and were concerned about long-term effects. In other workplace surveys, people have shared concerns about how this could affect fertility or pregnant women. Some health professionals infected with Covid think it is not necessary while they still have antibodies.
Any of these questions can be answered. And national studies have found that hesitancy to vaccinate is generally decreasing.
But these studies also suggest that action still needs to be taken to appeal to the population who is likely to be suspicious of the country’s history of medical abuse.
Recent studies show that black people are the most reluctant to get vaccinated. In mid-November, 83% of Asian Americans said they would receive the vaccine if it was available to them that day. That sentiment was shared by 63% of Hispanic people, 61% of Caucasians, but only 42% of Black people, according to a report by Pew Research.
Dr. Nikhila Juvvadi, the chief clinical officer at Loretto Hospital in Chicago, told NPR that interviews with vaccine-hesitant staff revealed mistrust was a problem among African-American and Latino workers.
She said people specifically mentioned the Tuskegee study, when federal health officials left hundreds of black men with sexually transmitted diseases untreated to study disease progression. The study lasted from 1932 to 1972.
“I’ve heard Tuskegee more than I can count in the last month – and, you know, it’s a valid, well-founded concern,” Juvvadi said.
Juvvadi, who administered vaccines at the hospital, said one-on-one interviews that confirmed these concerns and answered questions had helped people feel more comfortable with the vaccine.
The hesitant vaccines among health professionals have also put pressure on health systems that are committed to getting doses to as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
Georgia’s public health commissioner Kathleen Toomey announced last week that the state would expand access to vaccines to adults aged 65 and over and emergency responders because health workers refused to take it.
Dr. Toomey said that while hundreds of health workers were on waiting lists to get the vaccine in the state’s urban center, Atlanta, rural areas, the vaccine was “literally in freezers” because health workers wouldn’t take it there.
At one of the hospitals in Texas most affected by the virus, the Doctors Hospital in Renaissance in the Rio Grande Valley, workers contacted local EMTs, paramedics and medical workers from outside the hospital to distribute their remaining vaccines due to their limited shelf life.
Susan, the nurse in Alaska, said she would prefer her parents to get the vaccine first because they are more vulnerable.
She has made peace with the vaccine and plans to have it next time it is offered. She said she was eventually convinced to get it after talking to other health professionals who didn’t address her concerns and listened to her questions.
Now, however, there is one more hurdle. Susan has rejected the vaccine twice due to logistics. She is currently on a temporary crisis assignment in rural Texas, and the trip meant that she was offered the vaccine both times, that she would be in a different state when it came time to take the second dose. Susan said, “I feel terrible, I said no.”