Some health care providers still say no to a Covid-19 vaccine

The hesitation among health professionals concerns public health officials who expected America’s frontline workers to serve as a model for others.

“Please get vaccinated,” Anthony Fauci, who is President Biden’s chief medical advisor on the Covid-19 pandemic, said in a video message to health care providers. “It’s important to protect yourself, to protect your family, but symbolically just as important as caregivers, it’s important to show confidence in the vaccine so that other people in this country follow suit.”

In a survey of 1,563 respondents conducted in January by researchers at the Kaiser Family Foundation, 79% of adults in the US who have not yet been vaccinated say they are likely to turn to a doctor, nurse, or other health care provider to decide or to get a vaccination.

Meanwhile, 28% of the 128 health workers in the Kaiser survey said they wanted to see how the vaccine works for other people before getting it themselves. While they weren’t the most resistant group the foundation studied, their inordinate influence on whether members of the general public would choose to get the vaccine concerns public health officials.

Studies of vaccine skepticism in a broader population have shown that people are less hesitant the less they see others vaccinated.

Some health professionals say they’ve let the shot down for altruistic reasons, believing others should get it first. Several health care systems said they have struggled to persuade female workers to get vaccinated due to a lack of data on how the vaccines affect pregnancy. Other health professionals say that while they want to encourage others to get vaccinated, when it comes to their own health, they are still wary.

“When I got my first injection, I asked the two nurses who gave it to me how they felt when they got the injection. And they were on the side of the wait. That scared me a bit, but I kept going, ”said Charles Smith II, chief financial officer at Vibrant Health in Kansas City, Kansas.

According to Vibrant Health’s general manager, Patrick Sallee, about 30% of the staff in the system of clinics where Mr. Smith works has decided not to get the vaccine so far.

Mr. Smith said he was uncomfortable with the speed of the process and the lack of long-term data, but the news that a more transmissible virus variant was spreading made him take the plunge. “There is an expectation that the health industry will lead other industries to say this thing is safe and leads by example,” he said. “I really feel like I’m shaking the dice.”

Mr. Smith’s wife, Aniika Jackson-Smith, a dentist, said she was also hesitant to get a vaccine because she thinks not enough is known about its long-term effects. She said she eventually decided to schedule an appointment in late January to get the first injection because she feels a responsibility as a health care provider not to discourage others from getting it.

“My thoughts haven’t really changed,” she said. “But I think to get past this, people are just going to have to take the vaccine or we’ll be here forever.”

Heidi Arthur, chief campaign development officer at the Ad Council who has led a large-scale public education effort about the Covid-19 vaccines, said it was not initially part of the plan to get health workers on board.

“It was surprising the level of hesitation,” she said.

Rather than having health workers lined up, the Ad Council brought together a diverse group of industry leaders, including Dr. Fauci, to educate other health professionals about the vaccines and address their concerns.

For Susan Izzo, an adult nurse practitioner in Connecticut, her initial hesitation was because she felt her patients deserved the vaccine before her. Ultimately, her patients persuaded her to take the pictures, she said, so she could be healthy to protect them.

“I didn’t feel like it was my turn, even though it’s my turn as a counselor. I would have liked to give my vaccine to my 55-year-old patient who had just had a lung transplant, ”she said.

Deborah Burger, a president at National Nurses United, the largest nurses’ union in the US, said many nurses felt that information about vaccines released during the Trump administration was politicized and wanted to know more so they could decide for themselves whether it was was safe. . Education and more information, she said, is on the rise among nurses.

Dawn Allen, vice president of patient services at Huron Regional Medical Center in South Dakota, initially said less than 50% of their staff chose to get vaccinated. After sitting with the staff to answer their questions, particularly concerns about infertility, she said that up to 76% of the staff choose to get vaccinated over a two-week period.

Still, some nurses say they do not plan to get vaccinated.

Cleon Charles, a traveling nurse who worked in Covid-19 hotspots during the pandemic, said she would never get the vaccine and has discouraged her daughters and parents from getting it, despite having had Covid-19 herself.

Among other things, she cited a widespread distrust of the pharmaceutical industry and the death of baseball legend Hank Aaron, who publicly received the Covid-19 vaccine in early January. Medical officials say the baseball legend died of natural causes, but his death has been seized by anti-vaccination leaders, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who called the death “part of a wave of suspicious deaths among the elderly, closely following the administration. from #COVID #vaccines, ”on Twitter.

“I don’t want to,” said Mrs. Charles. “I’m taking my chances and my vitamins.”

Write to Julie Wernau at [email protected]