‘A tipping point’: Government officials, health groups move to require coronavirus vaccines for workers

New vaccine mandates are being rolled out at VA, in California, New York City, the Mayo Clinic, among other places.

Thanks to Dick Dion, MD

Dan Diamond 7:30 p.m. EDT in the Washington Post

Faced with the explosive growth of a new virusvariant, the state of California and the city of New York gave workers a choice: Get vaccinated or face weekly testing. And an array of hospitals from coast to coast, including the prestigious Mayo Clinic, declared they would require staff to get vaccinated, following a joint plea from the nation’s major medical groups.

Health-care leaders say the moves represent an escalation of the nation’s fight against the coronavirus — the first concerted effort to mandate that tens of millions of Americans get vaccinated, more than seven months after regulators authorized the shots and as new cases rip through the nation. VA’s mandate applies to more than 100,000 front-line workers, New York City’s applies to about 45,000 city employees and contractors, and California’s applies to more than 2.2 million state employees and health workers.

“You can call it a tipping point,” said Mark Ghaly, California’s health secretary, noting that millions of people have declined the shots despite public health experts’ appeals and a range of incentives. “For so many Californians and Americans, this might be the time to get vaccinated.”Residents wait in line to receive a coronavirus vaccine in January at a nursing home and rehabilitation center in New York City. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)

Ghaly noted that in California, about 900 coronavirus cases in mid-June were severe enough to require hospitalization versus nearly 3,000 now, driven by the hyper-transmissible delta variant. “As we stare down schools opening up in just a matter of a couple of weeks, as we look at the projections with delta, we felt now is the right time,” he said.

Confirmed coronavirus infections nationwide have quadrupled in July, from about 13,000 cases per day at the start of the month to more than 54,000 now, according to Washington Post tracking. Hospital leaders in states such as Alabama, Florida and Missouri have implored holdouts to get vaccinated, citing data that the shots preventthe most severe forms of the diseasethat lead to hospitalization and even death.

“We have reached a confluence where health-care workers want vaccine mandates, and government is responding,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who organized the joint statement from nearly 60 medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association, urging every health facility to require workers to get vaccinated.