3pc of health care staff out of jobs over vaccine mandate
LONDON: Gov. Kathy Hochul reaffirmed her COVID-19 vaccine mandate strategy Wednesday as she revealed that 3% of workers — almost 34,000 statewide — at hospitals, nursing homes, home health care agencies and adult care facilities were forced from their jobs after declining to get inoculated against the virus.
During a wide-ranging news conference in Manhattan, Hochul announced that her administration was filing an appeal to the Second Circuit following a “disappointing” ruling Tuesday that indefinitely extended a preliminary injunction preventing the state from enforcing its vaccine mandate on health care staff who cite religious exceptions.
The ruling, by Judge David Hurd of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York in Utica, means the state is barred from enforcing any requirement that employers deny religious exemptions. His ruling does not suspend the mandate for other workers, and doesn’t require that an application for a religious exception necessarily be granted.
Despite the ruling, Hochul said she continued to stand behind the mandate.
“We believe it works. It has had a dramatic effect on our ability to protect people, particularly health care workers,” Hochul said. “When someone is sick and they go into an urgent care center or go into a hospital, they are in need of help because they are in a vulnerable, physical state. They need to know that the person taking care of them will not pass on this deadly virus to them or their family members.”
State Health Department figures show that 33,982 combined employees at nursing homes, adult care facilities, hospitals and those providing home health care were terminated, resigned, retired or furloughed after refusing to get vaccinated.
They include 20,512 employees of home health care agencies; 8,612 hospital workers; 4,081 nursing home staffers, and 777 who work for adult care facilities, according to the data.
Roughly half of 1% percent of employees in those fields are still waiting to get vaccinated, while other unvaccinated individuals are still employed because they cited religious exemptions.
The data shows that 92% of nursing home staff have received at least one shot, along with 96% of hospital employees, 95% of adult care facility staff and 94% of those working in home health care. The figures are up considerably in each category since Hochul took office in late August, she said.
“I think that the mandates have brought people to the right decision and you can see that bearing out in what we have right here,” Hochul said, only moments before she received her annual flu shot.
It remains unclear how many workers in each of the four fields have left their jobs on Long Island.
The Kaiser Family Foundation reported that the state had 1.25 million health care workers in May 2020.
Northwell Health, the state’s largest health care system, said this month that it had fired 1,400 employees for refusing to comply with the mandate. Other health care systems in the region have reported firings or suspensions in the dozens or low hundreds.
Al Cardillo, president and chief executive of the Albany-based Home Care Association of New York State, said a final survey of his agencies should be complete by Thursday. But, he said, preliminary figures could translate to as many as 170,000 patients who are “unable to be served by these aides under the state’s mandate, plus nurses and others who did not vax. These numbers are fluid, however, as we continue to urge and support provider efforts to promote staff vaccination.”
