60% of Ohio Nursing Home Workers Refuse Vaccine

By Marty Schladen
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,” Read Full Article >