Mandates Boost Vaccination Rates Among Health Care Workers in California
The New York Times
With a deadline of Thursday, most major health care employers reported vaccination rates this week of 90 percent or higher.
California’s requirement for all health care workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, which took effect Thursday, appears to have compelled tens of thousands of unvaccinated employees to get shots in recent weeks, bolstering the case for employer mandates.
In a survey of more than a dozen of the state’s major hospital systems, most health care employers reported vaccination rates this week of 90 percent or higher, with hundreds — and in some cases, thousands — more workers in some systems opting to be vaccinated, rather than to apply for limited medical or religious exemptions, since Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration issued the health order Aug. 5.
The uptick in vaccinations comes as a federal vaccine mandate, ordered by President Biden, is pending for hospital and nursing home employees. Several other states also have imposed mandates for health care workers, including New York, where employees at hospitals and nursing homes were to have received at least one vaccine dose by the start of this week.
