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Tag: refused

  • Ohio officials not tracking rate of vaccine refusals

    Ohio officials not tracking rate of vaccine refusals

    Gov. Mike DeWine is pictured during his statewide address on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Photo courtesy Ohio Channel.

    By Marty Schladen and Ohio Capital Journal

    Columbus, Ohio – Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine got a lot of attention Wednesday when he said that 60% of nursing home workers who were offered a coronavirus vaccine refused to take it. 

    DeWine: 60% of Ohio nursing home workers are refusing vaccine

    But state health officials on Thursday said there’s no organized effort to track refusals among people they consider so critical that they’ve been given first crack at the scarce vaccines.

    In a press conference, DeWine implored people who are eligible for the vaccine to accept it, warning that it could be a long time before they get another chance. That argument might seem pretty compelling, given that a fast-spreading variant of the virus has popped up in two states, ICU beds are filling and the two approved vaccines have trickled out at a rate far lower than the Trump administration promised.

    But DeWine lamented that many nursing home workers are passing on the vaccines anyway.

    “Our bigger concern is the amount of staff who are not taking it,” he said. “I don’t have data in front of me, but anecdotally, it looks like somewhere around 40% of staff at nursing homes are taking the vaccines and 60% are not taking it.”

    The statement went viral. A tweet about it generated more than 5 million impressions as of Thursday evening.

    Despite the obvious interest in how many people are refusing to be vaccinated, that’s not something the state is measuring.

    DeWine made his statement about nursing home workers “from some reports we have been hearing from our pharmacy partners,” Ohio Department of Health spokeswoman Melanie Amato said in an email Thursday. “It ranges in facilities, but this is a rough average. Remember the nursing home are largely being vaccinated by Walgreens/CVS as part of the federal program. We rely on them for the information. Same with hospitals. We track vaccines that have been given. We don’t track who would have refused.”

    Neither CVS nor Walgreens could immediately be reached for comment. While they are handling vaccinations in congregate settings such as nursing homes, they aren’t in charge of vaccinating hospital staff, paramedics and the like. Ohio health officials apparently aren’t tracking the rate at which those groups are refusing the vaccine, either.

    Dan Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, said that despite the low level of nursing home workers agreeing to be vaccinated, the governor isn’t considering a mandate — at least for now.

    “On mandating the vaccine for these groups, we are still in the rollout of this phase, and our message to Ohioans is that if you are in group 1A, we urge you to take the vaccine now, because it may be months before there is another opportunity available to you,” he said. “We believe that increasing awareness will help increase the utilization rate. Ultimately, it is up to each health care provider to determine which workers they employ meets the criteria in group 1A to receive the vaccine in this phase.”

  • DeWine: 60% of Ohio nursing home workers are refusing vaccine

    DeWine: 60% of Ohio nursing home workers are refusing vaccine

    By Marty Schladen and Ohio Capital Journal

    As the coronavirus vaccine dribbles out far more slowly than promised, many of the people who can get it are refusing to do so.

    Gov. Mike DeWine on Wednesday said that a whopping 60% of nursing home workers who have been offered the vaccine have refused it. 

    The news comes amid disappointing vaccination numbers across Ohio, which was told by the Trump administration that it would receive more than 530,000 doses of the vaccines by the end of December. Just 94,000 so far have been administered.

    “I am not satisfied with where we are in Ohio,” DeWine said during a coronavirus press conference. “We’re not moving fast enough, but we’re going to get there.”

    He said he had a Wednesday morning conference call with CEOs of Ohio hospital systems and set a goal of getting the covid vaccine into people’s arms within 24 hours of when hospitals receive it. DeWine said the job of distributing the vaccine is more complex than many appreciate, but it’s vital to do it quickly.

    “There’s a moral imperative to get this out just as quickly as we can,” he said.

    But the numbers emerging from nursing homes might portend something just as bad.

    “Our bigger concern is the amount of staff who are not taking it,” DeWine said. “I don’t have data in front of me, but anecdotally, it looks like somewhere around 40% of staff at nursing homes are taking the vaccines and 60% are not taking it.”

    Those figures are disturbing not only because of what they might say about attitudes toward the vaccines among the larger population. They also mean that most staffers will be unprotected as they move between the outside world and nursing homes filled with vulnerable people — some of whom will not be able to take the vaccine for medical reasons.

    Even so, DeWine said he isn’t going to make anybody take it.

    “I’m not going to compel anybody to do it, but I’m urging people to take that vaccine,” he said. “It’s very important,” 

    It’s not clear why the governor isn’t imposing such a requirement. 

    All 50 states have laws requiring — with exemptions — that children be vaccinated before going to school. Also, many healthcare facilities require employees to be vaccinated.

    A DeWine spokesman didn’t immediately respond when asked why DeWine wouldn’t order Ohio nursing homes to follow suit.

    Ohio’s problems distributing the coronavirus vaccine come amid national problems producing and distributing the two vaccines that so far have received approval. With hospital beds filling, the country is falling far short of the Trump administration’s promises.

    The administration said that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated by the end of December, but so far, only 11.4 million doses have been sent to states and just 2.1 million people have received a first dose, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

    At the current pace, it will take 10 years to vaccinate enough Americans to achieve herd immunity, NBC reported.

    Among those promising 20 million vaccinated Americans by the end of 2020 was U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams. He made the statement just 11 days ago in a press conference with DeWine.

    Adams dismissed reports that vaccine doses were coming to states at substantially lower levels than promised as blips that are to be expected in such a complex project. He also scoffed at the need to invoke the Defense Production Act to scale up production of approved vaccines, saying the manufacturers were operating at full capacity.

    Three days later, the New York Times reported that Pfizer, manufacturer of one of the vaccines, was close to a deal with the administration to use the Defense Production Act to obtain more of the materials to make it. Pfizer had been asking for such help since September, the story said.