Major hospital systems in the Midwest won’t force their doctors and nurses to get the still experimental Pfizer mRNA vaccine.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use, meaning the bio-engineered vaccine is still experimental.
Dr. Graham Snyder, the medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), says the Pfizer mRNA vaccine will not be mandatory for UPMC’s 89,000 employees, according to Pennlive.com.
UPMC requires its employees to get the flu vaccine every year because the mandatory flu vaccination policy “is based on decades of experience with the influenza vaccine.”
Snyder said the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine was developed in under a year and there is “no comparable data for a COVID-19 vaccine”.
The vaccine will be given to employees who want it, but UPMC will conduct its own review of the vaccines before injecting any of its employees, Snyder said.
“Until we learn more and build our own experience with this vaccine… it’s not the right thing to make it mandatory,” he said.
UPMC hospital system includes 40 hospitals with more than 8,000 licensed beds, 700 clinical locations and doctors’ offices, according to Wikipedia.
Dr. Robert Citronberg, executive medical director of infectious disease and prevention for Advocate Aurora Health, called the speed in which the vaccine was developed “One of the great scientific achievements of our time.”
Citronberg added: “We don’t feel like we have enough information to mandate it. We also don’t think that’s the right strategy right now.”
Advocate Aurora Health is one of the largest systems in the Midwest, with 10 hospitals in Illinois and 16 hospitals in Wisconsin, according to the Daily Herald.
“We expect that hopefully in the next four or six weeks we should be able to immunize all of our patient-facing team members who want to get a vaccine,” Citronberg said.
Edward-Elmhurst Health and Northwestern Medicine hospitals in the Illinois suburbs also won’t force their employees to take the vaccine.
In DuPage County, public health authorities expect an allotment of about 13,000 doses for its 58,000 health workers and long-term care facility residents. Officials will assess which hospital employees want the vaccine before distribution begins in the coming weeks.
