“Getting enough staff has become a real challenge for some hospitals,” said Ms. Emerson-Shea, adding that her organization had asked the California attorney general to investigate reports of price gouging by agencies that hospitals hundreds of dollars each Calculate hour for travel nurses.
The state of vaccine mandates in the United States
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- Vaccination rules. On August 23, the FDA granted Pfizer-BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine full approval for people aged 16 and over, paving the way for mandates in both the public and private sectors. Such mandates are legally permissible and have been confirmed in legal challenges.
- College and Universities. More than 400 colleges and universities require a vaccination against Covid-19. Almost all of them are in states that voted for President Biden.
- schools. California became the first state to enact a mandate to vaccinate all educators in public and private schools. New York City has also introduced a vaccination mandate for teachers and staff, but this is still in effect due to legal challenges. On September 27, a federal appeals court overturned a decision that temporarily suspended that mandate. it. Los Angeles has mandated vaccines for students 12 years and older who attend class in person.
- Hospitals and medical centers. Many hospitals and major health systems require their employees to be vaccinated. Medical mandates in California and New York state appear to have forced thousands of objecters to receive injections.
- New York City. Evidence of vaccination from workers and customers is required for indoor dining, gyms, performances, and other indoor situations. City education staff and hospital staff also need to be vaccinated.
- At the federal level. On the 9th of September President Biden announced a vaccination mandate for the vast majority of federal employees. This mandate applies to employees of the executive branch, including the White House and all federal agencies and members of the armed forces.
- In the private sector. Mr Biden has ordered that all companies with more than 100 employees mandate vaccinations or weekly tests to drive new company vaccination policies. Some companies, such as United Airlines and Tyson Foods, had mandates prior to Mr. Biden’s announcement.
This week, state health officials offered health facilities a 45-day grace period to comply with the mandate’s critical staff shortage.
But California in general has taken a tough stance on pandemic health interventions. At the beginning of the crisis, the state was one of the first to issue home stay orders and was one of the most aggressive in promoting masks and vaccinations.
Mr Newsom – who overcame a pandemic-fueled effort to remove him from office earlier this month – said this week the state is “in talks” with school districts over a mandate requiring eligible students to receive the vaccine. State health officials this week also expanded the mandate of health workers to include thousands of home health workers and health workers in senior centers, disabled centers and hospices, with a November 30 deadline.
“This is an extremely important mandate that helps ensure the safety of everyone in our healthcare system, and it particularly protects those who are seriously ill who rely on hospitals and other facilities to protect their health,” Dr . Tomás J. Aragón, the state’s director of public health, said in a statement, adding that health authorities are closely monitoring deadlines and “expect full compliance”.
Compliance appears to be the goal of the state’s largest healthcare employers. In the giant Kaiser Permanente system, for example, more than nine out of ten of the 216,000 employees and 23,000 doctors in California are fully vaccinated, a spokesman for the system said. Two weeks ago, the vaccination rate for the system’s employees was around 87 percent.
At the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, around 97 percent of the approximately 17,000 employees are now vaccinated. Dr. Jeffrey A. Smith, chief operating officer, said that while most of the hospital’s staff and doctors were early adopters, up to 800 staff received their syringes after the state mandate restricted their options to work in other California hospitals.
