Published on : Modified :
–
New York (AFP)
The state and city of New York, bruised by Covid-19, are the first in the United States to experiment with compulsory vaccination for caregivers and teachers, which has pushed up the injection rate despite a minority of recalcitrant.
Since Monday, all caregivers and staff in public and private state hospitals, or nearly 520,000 people, must be vaccinated to go to work, otherwise their salaries will be suspended and risk being made redundant.
The Democratic governor of the state, Kathy Hochul, initially made the big eyes by promising to mobilize the National Guard to replace the unvaccinated caregivers, raising fears of a chaotic situation in the hospitals. She finally welcomed the fact that no health care establishment has been closed for lack of personnel since Monday, the day the obligation entered into force in this state of 20 million inhabitants, the fourth in the country.
Covid-19 has killed more than 56,000 people in the state – including 34,000 in New York – since March 2020.
Other states should follow, such as California as of Thursday, but caregivers who refuse the vaccine there keep the possibility of working by being tested every week.
Kathy Hochul, who succeeded Andrew Cuomo on August 25, also welcomed the increase in the rate of fully vaccinated caregivers, which had reached 87% on Wednesday. For example, the percentage of nursing home staff who received at least one dose of vaccine rose from 71% on August 24, to 82% on September 20 and 92% on Monday.
For Kathy Hochul, faced with one of her first political tests, this “shows that maintaining the vaccination obligation for health workers is simply the right thing to do”, while the rule has been attacked several times in court, so far to no avail.
– Contrasting situation –
In New York, there were just over 3,000 unvaccinated public health or hospital workers on Wednesday, out of a total of 43,000, up from around 5,000 at the start of the week and some 8,000 the week before, Dr Mitchell Katz said. , who runs the city’s health services.
“We have available a staff of around 500 nurses who are replacing those who have not yet been vaccinated or who have chosen to retire. We have not yet dismissed anyone,” he said, assuring that those who would receive their first dose when they arrived at work could take their duty normally.
“Our workforce is almost 100% vaccinated,” said the private group Northwell Health, which manages 23 hospitals and more than 800 outpatient care facilities in the state.
The group said that out of 76,000 people including 18,900 nurses and 4,800 interns, “a few hundred unvaccinated employees were contacted last week to urgently make arrangements to receive an injection.”
“We unfortunately had to get out of the system a few hundred employees” who were still not vaccinated Monday, added Northwell Health without specifying whether they were layoffs.
But the situation is not the same in all hospitals in the state, which extends to the border with Canada.
Thus, the Buffalo hospital, which manages nearly 600 beds in the north of the state, he told AFP to have had to “put on unpaid leave” about 5% of its staff, or 167 employees. on 3.303. The rate even reaches 20% in a long-term care service that depends on the hospital, where a hundred of the 474 employees are still not vaccinated.
The hospital therefore had to deprogram the least urgent interventions and reorganize its opening hours.
The compulsory vaccination of caregivers is a test balloon for New York City, before that of teachers whose entry into force was postponed to Friday by a court decision.
“Get your first dose by then or don’t come back to work Monday. The choice is yours,” Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio wrote on Twitter.
Even if the majority of teachers are already vaccinated, unions of teachers and school directors have warned that too brutal application of the measure could disrupt schools.
© 2021 AFP
–
