{"id":10140,"date":"2021-06-14T09:31:30","date_gmt":"2021-06-14T13:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/?p=10140"},"modified":"2021-06-14T09:55:35","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T13:55:35","slug":"the-time-for-hospitals-to-require-covid-19-vaccination-among-employees-is-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/the-time-for-hospitals-to-require-covid-19-vaccination-among-employees-is-now\/2021\/06\/14\/","title":{"rendered":"The Time for Hospitals to Require COVID-19 Vaccination Among Employees Is Now"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Drs. Harry Meyer and Paul Parkman examine the rubella vaccine. National Library of Medicine.<\/p><\/div>\n

Imagine you work at a hospital.<\/p>\n

Patients come and go, admitted through the emergency room, or electively for surgery. Or they arrive for the day \u2014 maybe it’s an outpatient visit, or to receive chemotherapy or an infusion of biologic agents, or to undergo various imaging and other tests.<\/p>\n

Some of them, of course, have weakened immune systems and won’t be fully protected by the COVID-19 vaccines. Others may not have received the vaccines based on poor access to healthcare or other social determinants.<\/p>\n

Now imagine that you, healthcare worker, contracted COVID-19 because you’ve chosen not to be vaccinated. You feel well — in fact you are completely asymptomatic, blithely clicking the NO SYMPTOMS box in your hospital’s entry screen — but you’re in that brief period of being highly contagious<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And, as a result, you are the source of a COVID-19 transmission within the hospital to one or more of these vulnerable patients, and maybe some hospital coworkers (who could also be immunocompromised) as well.<\/p>\n

How would that make you feel?<\/em><\/p>\n

Importantly, the above chilling scenario is anything but hypothetical. An outbreak in a nursing home occured when one of the unvaccinated employees infected multiple residents and other staff<\/a>. Even though 90% of the residents had been vaccinated, three of them died.<\/p>\n

As cases continue to drop in the United States, we might need reminding that this is a highly contagious virus — even more so with the latest variants, which are 50% more transmissible than the original virus from China. Key graphic below, with estimated R0 for the increasingly dominant alpha and delta variants:<\/p>\n

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"The fact it has happened twice in 18 months, two lineages (Alpha and then Delta) each 50% more transmissible is a phenomenal amount of change"\u2014@ArisKatzourakis<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/A4M6dGfxSp<\/a>
by @JamesTGallagher<\/a> @bbchealth<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/PWvIiKYTVC<\/a><\/p>\n

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) June 12, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n