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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowCommunity Health Network, the Indianapolis-area’s third largest hospital system, said Thursday that it will require all employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Sept. 15.
The system joins IU Health, the state’s largest hospital system, which announced a similar policy on Tuesday.
Community Health said more than 60 percent of the system’s 16,000 employees have already voluntarily received the vaccine since becoming eligible to receive it in December.
Employees have a Sept. 15 deadline to be fully vaccinated.
“Since the pandemic started, our caregivers have proven time and again to be heroes in the face of daunting and sometimes frightening challenges,” Community President and CEO Bryan Mills said in a written statement. “Getting vaccinated is one more step in the collective fight against COVID-19.”
Community also requires the flu vaccine as a condition of employment. As with the flu vaccine, exemptions for the COVID vaccine will be made for religious or medical reasons, it said.
The system said vendors, contractors and volunteers are included in the vaccine requirement. Patients and visitors will continue to be required to wear masks while on site.
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So I guess the question I have — will either/both healthcare systems use Indiana’s generous “At Will” employment terms to shed those who refuse to be vaccinated or will there be a continuation of tolerance of the anti-science people who seem to be wagging the dogs?
I’m genuinely curious on whether the IU Health Protestors who ultimately won’t accept a vaccine as a condition of employment will be shown the door for violating the terms of employment.
For what it’s worth, I do have several friends that have medical conditions (aka transplants and post-cancer compromised immune systems) where vaccines would do more harm than good.
The news story does not clarify this, but I can basically guarantee there is an exemption for immunocompromised individuals. It’s a hospital system. I’m pretty sure they are aware that an employee who’s immunocompromised can’t be vaccinated. If they aren’t given exemptions, Community will face a lot of lawsuits if they fire anyone in that situation.
Anything for publicity…..
Especially now in this stage of the game, why does it matter?
With all the new findings of Fauci’s frauds about the vaccines and the undeniable above average dangerous medical risk present and future, are these tyrant companies going the sign a legally binding commitment to assume the care and liabilities of those they force the vaccines on if they are injured by the vaccines?
Until they assume responsibility for their actions, they shouldn’t be able to force the issue.
So what about OSHA protecting people from performing task ordered by an employer that they deem unsafe???
Businesses have the right to require employees to be vaccinated. This has been played out in courts before. Sorry that you feel this is tyrannical, but it’s not. I didn’t get upset at my public high school in Indiana when I was forced to get a Swine Flu vaccine, which was also approved for emergency use.
I think you are confused. The risk of an adverse reaction to the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine is minuscule compared to a bad outcome from actually getting COVID.
Plus with the new COVID variants, the risk of hospitalization is double what it was as the beginning of the pandemic. In addition the Gamma variant is now killing children under the age of 5 at a much higher rate. Bringing home COVID to the family can be the gift that keeps giving.
Plus people are still dying from COVID, the former mayor of Elkhart just died a few weeks ago from COVID and he has been eligible to get a vaccine since March. I guess that is just another person that over-estimated the risk of the vaccine, vs the risk of getting COVID.
If you are hanging on the “this is for emergency use” argument, that thread is getting really thin. Millions of doses with minimal adverse reactions, plus Pfizer and Moderna have already applied for FDA approval, and at this point, there is nothing to block approval except shuffling the paperwork.
I am always curious why these conversations never address the recent studies from the Cleveland Clinic and others that show that people that have had Covid and recovered have similar immunity as vaccinated people. If it is all about science and numbers then that is a huge group of people who are not being counted anywhere.
Scott H., it’s a mixed bag, as not everyone who was infected has showed anti-bodies after recovering. But most have, though there is insufficient evidence as to how long the immunity lasts (just as this is no evidence yet to definitively say how long the vaccination remains effective in the body. So vaccinations and periodic booster shots are likely to be necessary for the foreseeable future.
Just get the vaccine and do yourself and everyone else a huge favor. I favor individual rights as much as anyone but this is a no brainer. Thanks to those that have gotten the vaccine the risks of infection have diminished greatly. They still exist however.
Just mandate everyone being under a BMI of 30. I favor individual rights as much as anyone but this is a no brainer…
Chris D – No one can catch obesity from you, but they can catch COVID. Pretty easy to understand why everyone able should be vaccinated.
What “religious reasons” are there? No major religion bans vaccinations. In face, most religions encourage getting vaccinated for the greater good.
Matthew C you failed to understand Chris D’s fact-based point. CDC data, on its website, shows that 78 percent of those who have been hospitalized for COVID have a high BMI. Other studies (independent of CDC) show that high BMI generally is associated with inflammation in the body, which makes it difficult to fight off disease — it lowers the body’s immune defense. As for natural immunity, you do not have to have live antibodies to fight the return of a previous infection because your body has T-cell memory — which signals your body to make antibodies when needed in response to a prior infection.
The argument that this vaccine is like past vaccines is a false statement. The mRNA approach has been used in cancer treatment, but it is only an applicable option to a very limited portion of cancer patients. So we have never seen how it plays out across a massively diverse pool of genetic makeups. The flu vaccine, conversely, does not use mRNA and is a traditionally developed vaccine (from a previous strain of dead virus). That process has been around for decades.
Forcing medical employees to be vaccinated for COVID is an issue of money. Hospitals have not been able to secure the number of vaccinations in their local communities — and those threshold achievements are required to collect COVID government dollars. So there is valid discussion alive out there among healthcare employees that healthcare operators are forcing their employees to be vaccinated to help them reach their required vaccination numbers for monetary gain.
This really isn’t a no brainer.