NEW YORK – Some of the nation’s most aggressive COVID-19 vaccine mandates are scheduled to take effect Monday in New York amid continued resistance from some to the shots, leaving hospitals and nursing homes across the state and schools in New York City bracing for possible staff shortages.
Many health care workers, including support staff such as cleaners, have still not yet received a required first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine days before a Sept. 27 deadline.
That’s the same deadline for teachers and school workers in New York City to prove they’ve received at least one shot.
That left the prospect of potentially thousands of health care workers and teachers being forced off the job next week.
Despite calls from unions and administrators to delay the mandates, Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio showed no signs of backing down.
“Every single person who is in your care has the right to know that there is no chance they will be infected by the person in charge of protecting them and their health,” Hochul, a Democrat, said according to AP.
Hospitals and nursing homes were preparing contingency plans that included cutting back on elective surgeries and, at one hospital, halting maternity services. Nursing homes were limiting admissions. The state´s largest health care provider, Northwell Health, was keeping thousands of volunteers on standby.
“We would like to see some more time to be able to comply and implement the vaccine mandate, because at the end of the day it´s a situation where we´re very concerned about our ability to care for the patients,” said Tom Quatroche, CEO of the Erie County Medical Center Corporation, which operates a busy 573-bed hospital in Buffalo.
It anticipates that about 10 per cent of its workforce, or 400 staff members, might still be unvaccinated Monday. Under a contingency plan, the hospital said it would suspend elective inpatient surgeries, temporarily stop accepting ICU transfers from other institutions and reduce hours at clinics.
New York is not the only state to require health care workers to get vaccinated. But it has been especially aggressive in pushing for wider vaccinations to help limit the spread of the virus.
The mayor and governor said workers had plenty of time to get the shots. The mandate for state health care workers was announced this summer. New York City announced in July that its teachers would need to either get vaccinated or tested for COVID-19 weekly, but it then revoked the test-out option in August.
While most school workers have been vaccinated, inducing nearly 90% of teachers as of Thursday, unions representing New York City principals and teachers warned that could still leave the 1 million student school system short of as many as 10,000 teachers, along with other staff such as cafeteria workers and school police officers.
Those who don´t provide proof of a shot by the end of Monday will not be allowed to return to classrooms Tuesday, which will leave principals scrambling overnight to make sure they have enough substitutes, educators warned.
The unions said that while they’ve encouraged everyone to get vaccinated, some schools could be dangerously low on staff Tuesday. They pleaded for the mayor to delay the mandate after a judge refused to halt the rule.
“We are concerned. Very, very concerned,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said.
Mark Cannizzaro, the president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, said some schools have as many as 100 staff members not in compliance.
De Blasio insisted the city was ready.
“We´ve been planning all along. We have a lot of substitutes ready,” the Democrat said in a radio interview on Friday. “A lot is going to happen between now and Monday but beyond that, we are ready, even to the tune of, if we need thousands, we have thousands.”
The mandate for health care workers comes as hospitals are already reeling from staff shortages due in part to rising demand, workers retiring and weary employees seeking other jobs after 18 months of the pandemic.
There is one option for health care workers who don’t want to get the shot, which is to apply for a religious exemption. That would buy them until at least Oct. 12, while a federal judge considers a legal challenge arguing that such exemptions are constitutionally required.
Meanwhile, a state judge in Albany agreed to set aside a Monday deadline for court employees to get a first vaccine shot and would hear arguments next week on whether to extend the stay. The CSEA, which represents 5,800 workers, argued that the mandate should have been negotiated and not imposed unilaterally by the court system.
Earlier, another judge threw out a last-minute effort Friday by seven health care workers and Republican Niagara County legislator John Syracuse to delay the health care mandate.
