UK HealthCare, CHI Saint Joseph join hospitals mandating a COVID vaccine for workers
As COVID-19 continues to surge across Kentucky, the University of Kentucky’s hospital system and CHI Saint Joseph Health both announced Wednesday they will require vaccinations for employees and providers within their systems.
Citing a “resurgence in patients and positive cases,” a spokeswoman for Saint Joseph said details and dates for the new requirement will be provided to staff soon.
UK HealthCare, which includes Albert B. Chandler Hospital, Good Samaritan, the Markey Cancer Center and the Kentucky Children’s Hospital, said health care providers, trainees, learners and any staff who work within its health care system must be fully vaccinated by September 15. Roughly 93% of staff are already vaccinated. People to whom the mandate applies can claim religious or medical exceptions to the new rule.
Dr. Mark Newman, UK’s executive vice president for health affairs, said he hopes the new requirement will encourage more Kentuckians to get inoculated.
“Vaccination is the primary way to put the pandemic behind us and avoid the return of stringent public health measures,” he said.
All three Lexington hospital systems are now mandating vaccines for staff. Baptist Health, including Baptist Health Lexington, along Norton Health Care in Louisville, announced earlier this week they, too, were requiring system-wide employee vaccinations. On the day of the announcement, 65-75% of Baptist’s roughly 23,000 employees were already fully vaccinated, a hospital spokeswoman said.
The rollout of institutional mandates comes as spread of COVID-19 is once again worsening in Kentucky, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant. Cases have escalated for five straight weeks and the positivity rate has risen for 40 consecutive days, hovering on Wednesday just below 10% — a rate not seen since late January, before vaccines were widely available.
Coronavirus hospitalizations across the state have more than quadrupled in the last month, from 181 on July 3 to 824 on August 3. More than 260 coronavirus patients were in intensive care on Tuesday, up from 64 a month ago, and 96 were on a ventilator, up from 28 a month ago. Roughly 52% of Kentucky’s population is at least partially vaccinated, according to the state Department for Public Health.
Federal health organizations, including the American Medical Association, American Nurses Association and the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, have unilaterally called for vaccine mandates among staff. On Monday evening, Gov. Andy Beshear’s office announced — and then later walked back — that the Cabinet for Health and Family Services was mandating vaccines for all employees and contractors in state-run health care facilities, including veterans nursing homes. On Tuesday, his office corrected itself, instead saying the Cabinet will “strongly encourage” full vaccination by October 1.
UK, Saint Joseph and Baptist Health Lexington cited a system-wide staff vaccine mandate as a public health necessity in order to ensure optimum, safe patient care.
“During times of a public health crisis, there is no greater priority than to ensure the safety of each other, and for those who rely on us for safe care, often when they are most vulnerable,” Mary Branham said for Saint Joseph.
“Just as we have believed for years in vaccinations to slow the spread of influenza and its consequences for those who are medically compromised, we believe in COVID-19 vaccinations as one crucial, tangible step we can all take to provide a safe environment of care,” UK’s Dr. Newman said.
This story was originally published August 4, 2021 at 4:04 PM.
