As California is considered the ‘epicenter’ of the COVID-19 pandemic, several essential workers who have been prioritized in the state and county vaccination plans have refused to take the plunge.
“So many frontline workers in Riverside County have refused the vaccine – an estimated 50% – that met with hospitals and public officials to find the best way to distribute the unused doses,” said Kim Saruwatari, public health director, according to The Los Angeles Times said.
Between 20% and 40% of frontline workers in Los Angeles County did not take the vaccine when it was first offered. More than half of the 700 qualifying employees at a hospital in Tehama County made the same decision, which resulted in the facility returning 200 doses to the Department of Health.
“They gave us the vaccines back, and we quickly started taking them out and using them,” said Dr. Tehama County Health Officer Richard Wickenheiser said.
While unused doses are distributed at hospitals in Tehama County to the next group of suitable individuals, the Times said ‘it is unclear’ what is happening in other areas. “State counseling allows hospitals to offer the vaccine to people with a lower priority if frontline workers have already offered the vaccine,” the report said.
The Times quoted several public health experts, officials and hospital workers who cited several reasons for the skepticism, including pregnancy, a lack of confidence in the federal government, the politicization of the virus and concerns about long-term side effects.
They are front-line workers with the highest priority to the COVID-19 vaccine, but they refuse to take it. Https://t.co/yDtTh6ccq2
– Los Angeles Times (@latimes) 31 December 2020
“I feel the public perception of health care workers is incorrect,” said Nicholas Ruiz, an office assistant at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, California. ‘They may think we’re all informed of this. They may think so because we work in this environment. ‘
“But I know there are a lot of people who have the same mentality as the public where they are still afraid to get it,” he added.
Nursing home staff are also reluctant, as administrators and employees interviewed by the Times estimate that about 25% of staff members are “reluctant to take the vaccine.”
As the Times reports:
The consequences are potentially dire: if too few people are vaccinated, the pandemic will stretch indefinitely, leading to future boom, excessive strain on the health care system and ongoing economic downturn. …
To convince reluctant workers, many hospitals use instructional videos and interactive webinars showing staff being vaccinated. At an Orange County hospital, Anthony Wilkinson, an intensive care nurse caring for coronavirus patients, said he had staff who “lost confidence in the big pharmaceutical and even the CDC.”
Officials at UCLA Health, which consists of four hospitals on two campuses, said “there may be hesitation in vaccines in our staff.” However, they did not provide data indicating how many of the more than 37,000 employees turned down the vaccine. As of Tuesday, 7,300 staff members had been vaccinated.
“We are not asking staff to immediately decide if they will receive the vaccine,” UCLA Health said in a statement. “We want to give the vaccines offered enough time to make a decision, and we hope that staff will continue to understand that the benefits of vaccination clearly outweigh the risks.”
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