Lauren Dempsey, MS in Biomedicine and Law, RN, FISM News
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California joins New Mexico as it becomes the second state to require health care workers to receive a COVID-19 booster shot in order to remain employed.
The new proclamation comes as the state prepares to deal with a potential surge in cases of the Omicron variant, which now accounts for 73% of the total cases in the United States.
The Omicron strand quickly outpaced the Delta variant just weeks after being discovered, with Delta now only accounting for 26% of cases. California has already required COVID-19 vaccines as a stipulation for employment in health care. The initial edict was issued in September and resulted in thousands of essential health care workers being suspended or fired for noncompliance.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has been one of the most authoritarian governors in the nation in terms of COVID mitigation measures, but has often come under fire for not appearing to follow his own guidelines. California is currently under a statewide indoor mask mandate for public gatherings that will remain in effect until Jan. 15th.
In a statement from Newsom’s office, the governor said that he is issuing the new mandate in order to take necessary steps to “protect Californians and ensure our hospitals are prepared.” Officials did, however, acknowledge that the situation was not as serious as it was this time last year. According to the Los Angeles Times, Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said, “we have new tools, so we don’t need to do what we did last year.”
According to the California Public Health Department, once an individual receives their COVID-19 vaccination it is uploaded to a digital COVID-19 record. This is automatically updated with each shot a person receives, however a new version needs to be downloaded to show proof of their most recent vaccination in the California Immunization Registry.
There is a strong nationwide push, particularly from those on the left, to have health care facilities at 100% vaccine compliance in an effort to protect health care workers from contracting the virus as well as spreading it to patients. According to the CDC, throughout the pandemic there have been over 700,000 positive COVID-19 cases among healthcare workers and, for the week of 12/12/21 through 12/18/21, there were 695 positive cases nationwide.
Many conservative legislators, however, have stood firm against these mandates, saying that they are counterproductive – instead causing a reduction of personnel which has added to the strain of current staffing shortages. Hospitals, in turn, are caught between either having enough staff to provide safe and quality care or enforcing vaccine mandates.
The booster shot mandate comes as the country faces many unknown factors of the Omicron variant, specifically whether it causes severe illness. As of now there has been only one reported death in the U.S. from the variant, and data coming out of South Africa, where the variant was first found, appears very promising.
Early studies suggest that a third dose of the vaccine is effective in providing increased immunity and protection against the Omicron variant as well. One specific study carried out by Pfizer BioNTech has shown that a third dose “increases the neutralizing antibody titers by 25-fold compared to two doses against the Omicron variant.”
Health care officials and the White House continue to strongly encourage vaccination and booster shots while chiding those who have not been vaccinated. Biden on Tuesday went as far as telling Americans it is their “patriotic duty” to get vaccinated.