Vaccination obligation for healthcare workers divides Italy

Of course, the risk is far too great. Of course not, the risk is far too great.

It is a debate without compromise, the fierce discussion in Italy about whether the cabinet on Friday rightly obliged doctors and nurses by decree to have themselves vaccinated against the corona virus.

“It is sad that such a measure is necessary in a civilized country anyway,” is the angry response on the phone from Roberto Burioni, one of the country’s best-known virologists. “I don’t understand, really, that there are doctors who don’t believe in the usefulness of vaccinations. That is like the driver of a school bus who does not believe in the usefulness of braking. ”

“Let’s be careful,” warns Roberto Cappelletti, surgeon general from the Trento region and involved with Isde, an international organization of doctors who highlight the relationship between health and ecological decline. “Is the government saying the vaccines are safe? The government is not Jesus, the government can be wrong. We should not take official propaganda as true. ”

‘Too many question marks’

Cappelletti says in a telephone conversation that only people who belong to a risk group should get vaccinated. He argues that there are still too many question marks about the effect of the vaccines, and that approving bodies such as the European Medicines Agency EMA and the US Food and Drug Administration are also making a fuss about possible side effects in their approval decisions. According to Cappelletti, this is not only the case with the AstraZeneca vaccine, but also with the vaccines of other manufacturers.

The discussion is rooted in a broader mistrust of vaccines that has become visible in Italy in recent years. Healthcare personnel were one of the first groups to be vaccinated, but a number of doctors and nurses refused.

After around 20 Covid-19 deaths in a hospital in Genoa were linked to a nurse who had deliberately not been vaccinated in mid-March, the Draghi cabinet that took office in February issued a decree. Everyone who works in healthcare, including pharmacy staff, is required to undergo a vaccination. Those who refuse will be transferred to a position without contact with others, or will have to sit at home without a salary until further notice.

Economic consequences

Burioni fully agrees with the decision. “Doctors must do everything to protect themselves and their patients, and that includes vaccination,” he says. He was one of the first to get vaccinated in front of the cameras in January.

The national doctors’ federation also supports the government decision. According to the federation, that is an additional means to reduce the number of daily corona deaths, last week between 417 and 529. Anyone who refuses vaccination, said president Filippo Anelli, “is not a doctor; it’s like an engineer who doesn’t believe in mathematics ”. He does wonder whether there are sufficient care functions without contact with the public for vaccine refusers.

That is no problem at all for Burioni. Leave them at home without a salary, he suggests. “I am convinced that many of the doubts of doctors and nurses disappear when they see the economic consequences of their refusal.”

Vaccine skeptic Cappelletti, who himself contracted Covid-19 after nursing an 87-year-old relative with this disease, thinks that open questions about vaccines are being covered up. What are the long-term effects? Has it indeed happened, as media reports suggest, that an vaccinated nurse has infected others? What about those few cases of thrombosis that have been reported?

According to Cappelletti, the vaccination obligation for healthcare personnel is contrary to the constitution. He and a group of supporters are considering going to court, although he thinks this makes little sense given the slow functioning of the Italian legal system. He is 64 and retired and says he will not be vaccinated. Everyone under sixty, he believes, should be able to make the risk assessment themselves: vaccinate or run the risk of Covid-19.

No Vax

The doubts about vaccines in general are not new. In recent years, vocally strong groups have also emerged in Italy that call themselves No Vax, Free Vax or Antivax. Particularly in the Five Star Movement, which started as a resistance to the ‘elite’ in the broadest sense of the word, a group of anti-taxers is still active, although the party has recently distanced itself from its past vaccine skepticism.

Also read how a top athlete who his daughter vaccinated against meningococcus, was abused on social media.

Four years ago, the debate about vaccinations flared up when the number of measles cases suddenly rose. The then cabinet wanted to expand the number of mandatory vaccinations for children (at the time: diphtheria, polio, tetanus and hepatitis B) with vaccinations against six other diseases, including measles. Opponents argued that this was too much, were against the compulsory nature, and screened against controversial studies linking vaccination and autism in children.

Ultimately, the law was passed and the resistance died down. But with the advent of the corona vaccines, discussions have flared up again. This Saturday morning, two incendiary bombs were dropped at a vaccination center in Brescia, northern Italy. Nobody was hurt.

Virologist Burioni finds the fear surrounding the vaccines “not realistic, but understandable”. In particular, the AstraZeneca vaccine, in his view, has been the subject of ‘catastrophic communication’, in which he says the risks are misrepresented. “The lesson from this is that we need to pay much more attention to the way we communicate about vaccines. It is no longer sufficient to say that a vaccine is efficient. ”