Staff push again towards hospitals requiring COVID vaccines – KIRO 7 Information Seattle

HOUSTON – (AP) – Jennifer Bridges, a registered nurse in Houston, firmly believes it is wrong for her employer to force hospital workers like her to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or to quit their jobs. But that is a lost legal argument so far.

In a grievous defeat, a federal judge bluntly ruled over the weekend that if employees of the Houston Methodist Hospital System don’t like it, they can work elsewhere.

“Methodist is trying to save lives without giving them the COVID-19 virus. It is a choice made to ensure the safety of employees, patients, and their families. Bridges is free to choose to accept or decline a COVID-19 vaccine; But if she refuses, she’ll just have to work somewhere else, ”wrote US District Judge Lynn Hughes when she dismissed a lawsuit filed by 117 Houston Methodist workers, including Bridges, about compulsory vaccination.

Judgment Saturday is believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S. in the closely watched legal battle over how far healthcare facilities can go to protect patients and others from the coronavirus, but it won’t be the end of the debate.

Bridges said she and the others would take her case to the US Supreme Court if necessary: ​​“This is just the beginning. We’ll fight for quite a while. “

And other hospital systems across the country, including Washington, DC, Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and most recently New York, have followed the Houston Methodist and suffered a setback as well.

Legal experts say such vaccine requirements, especially in a public health crisis, are likely to continue to be upheld in court as long as employers allow reasonable exemptions, including for medical issues or religious objections.

Houston Methodist staff compared their situation to medical experiments carried out on unwilling victims in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. The judge called the comparison “objectionable” and said the claims in the lawsuit that the vaccines were experimental and dangerous were false.

“These people are not going to be locked up. You are not strapped in. You are only asked to get the vaccination to protect the most vulnerable in hospitals and other health care settings, ”said Valerie Koch, assistant professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center.

Bridges is one of 178 Houston Methodist workers who were suspended without pay on June 8 and will be fired if they do not agree to be vaccinated by June 22.

The University of Pennsylvania’s health system, the largest private employer in Philadelphia, and the New York-Presbyterian hospital system have also warned that employees who are not fully vaccinated would lose their jobs.

The Houston Methodist’s decision in April made it the first major U.S. healthcare system to require COVID-19 vaccinations for workers. Many hospitals across the country, including the Houston Methodist, are already in need of other types of vaccines, including those for the flu.

Houston Methodist President and CEO Marc Boom said nearly 25,000 of the system’s 26,000+ workers had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

“You did the right thing. You protected our patients, your colleagues, your families and our community. Science proves that the vaccines are not only safe but also necessary if we are to turn the corner against COVID-19,” Boom said in a statement to employees.

But Bridges, 39, and Kara Shepherd, 38, another nurse who is part of the lawsuit, say they have no confidence in the safety of the vaccine. They say they have seen severe reactions from patients and staff, and that there is insufficient knowledge of the long-term effects.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has stated that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and highly effective, although a small number of health problems have been reported.

Both Bridges, who worked for 6½ years in the medical-surgical inpatient department of the Houston Methodist Hospital in the suburb of Baytown, and Shepherd, who worked for 7½ years in the labor and delivery unit of a Methodist hospital in Houston, say they are are not anti-vaccination opponents, not conspiracy theorists and do not make a political statement.

“For me, this ultimately boils down to freedom,” said Shepherd.

Her attorney Jared Woodfill said the hospital system doesn’t allow its employees to make their own health care decisions.

Indiana University Health, Indiana’s largest hospital system, requires all of its employees to be fully vaccinated by September 1st. So far, just over 60% of their 34,000 employees have been vaccinated, said spokesman Jeff Swiatek.

Some Indianapolis employees protested the requirement on Saturday.

Kasey Ladig, an intensive care nurse and outpatient coordinator in the bone marrow transplant unit at IU Health, said she left the job she loved the day the policy was announced.

“I would like to hear something other than ‘We trust science,'” said Ladig. “It was a huge red flag. I didn’t feel comfortable getting it. “

Hospital workers and others have argued that such requirements are illegal because the COVID-19 vaccines are being dispensed under an emergency clearance from the Food and Drug Administration and have not received final FDA approval. However, Koch said the emergency application doesn’t mean experimenting on humans, adding that FDA approval is expected.

Allison K. Hoffman, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said allegations by Houston Methodist staff that they were being used as human guinea pigs or that vaccine policies were in violation of the Nuremberg Code, a set of rules governing medical experimentation carried out in. Consequences of the Nazi atrocities “are too absurd on the border” were developed.

To avoid such battles, many employers offer vaccination incentives.

Instead of asking for vaccines, the small health care system in Jackson, Wyoming, offered employees who were vaccinated before the end of May a bonus of $ 600. This has increased vaccinations from 73% to 82% of St. John’s Health’s 840 employees, spokeswoman Karen Connelly said.

Bridges and Shepherd said that while the anticipated job loss meant some financial worries, they did not regret it.

“We’re all proud of our decision because we stood our ground and didn’t do anything against our will, just for a paycheck,” said Bridges.

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Melley answered from Los Angeles.

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Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70

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