Tag Archives: healthcare workers

California to require COVID-19 booster shots for healthcare workers

(Reuters) – California will require healthcare workers and workers in “high-risk congregate settings” to get a COVID-19 vaccine booster by Feb. 1, Governor Gavin Newsom said on Wednesday, as part of the state’s response to the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

The mandate follows a Sept. 30 mandate for the state’s healthcare workers to be fully vaccinated. Workers have been able to request an exemption for religious or medical reasons.

State employees who still have not received a booster must undergo testing for COVID-19 twice each week until Feb. 1, Newsom said in a statement.

Newsom, who disclosed the new mandate in a statement, was due to elaborate on the new requirement at a press conference later on Wednesday.

While California, the country’s most populous state, exceeds the national average for full vaccinations with 65.5%, it slightly lags the national average in booster shots at just under 30%, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The governor also announced that all public school students, from Kindergarten to 12th grade, will receive a rapid COVID-19 test as they head back to school from winter break.

The state also will expand operating hours for state-operated testing centers that have reached capacity, Newsom added.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago and Peter Szekely in New York)

Court revives U.S. COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare in 26 states

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) -A U.S. federal appeals court on Wednesday revived in 26 states a Biden administration COVID-19 mandate requiring millions of U.S. healthcare workers to get vaccinated if they work in federally funded facilities.

In a rare win for President Joe Biden’s pandemic strategy, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that a lower court only had the authority to block the mandate in the 14 states that had sued. The appeals court ruled that the lower court was wrong to impose a nationwide injunction.

Biden’s mandate requires that healthcare facilities get staff vaccinated against the coronavirus or lose funding from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The rule initially required more than 2 million unvaccinated healthcare workers be vaccinated by Dec. 6. It was blocked before the deadline and remains temporarily blocked in 24 states — the 14 states involved in the case reviewed by the New Orleans appeals court and 10 states where the mandate was blocked by a Nov. 29 ruling from a federal judge in St. Louis.

The 14 states that sued are: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.

The appeals court said the Biden administration had not made a strong showing that it was likely to prove during the litigation that it had the authority to impose the rule. The decision was rendered by Judges Leslie Southwick, appointed by President George W. Bush, and James Graves and Gregg Costa, both appointed by President Barack Obama.

The government argued that the mandate will potentially save thousands of lives every month as COVID-19 infections and deaths are expected to spike with the onset of winter and arrival of the Omicron variant, which carries a higher risk of infection.

The rule is one of three far-reaching Biden administration requirements aimed at boosting vaccination rates above the current 61% in the United States, where infections are rising and deaths remain above 1,000 per day.

Republican state attorneys general and conservative organizations and businesses have challenged the rules.

Two other COVID-19 requirements have also been blocked in courts.

In November, the same New Orleans federal appeals court blocked the administration’s workplace vaccine-or-testing mandate for businesses with at least 100 employees.

That mandate is currently being reviewed by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. On Wednesday, the court sided with the Biden administration, agreeing to hear the case initially before a three-judge panel rather than all 16 active judges on the court.

The final mandate requiring government contractors get their employees vaccinated was blocked by a federal judge in Georgia earlier this month.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by David Gregorio)

White House says DOJ will defend government’s authority to promote vaccine requirement

By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House said on Wednesday the U.S. Department of Justice “will vigorously defend” the government’s authority to promote its vaccine requirement in federal contracting after courts blocked the Biden administration from enforcing two vaccine mandates.

A U.S. District Judge in Louisiana on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) from enforcing its vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.

A U.S. District Judge in Kentucky blocked the administration from enforcing a regulation that new government contracts must include clauses requiring that contractors’ employees get vaccinated.

The legal setbacks, spurred by Republican state attorneys general, conservative groups and trade organizations that have sued to stop the regulations, added to a string of court losses for the Biden administration over its COVID-19 policies.

They also come amid concerns that the Omicron coronavirus variant could trigger a new wave of infections and curtail travel and economic activity around the world.

The administration’s most sweeping regulation – a workplace vaccine-or-testing mandate for businesses with at least 100 employees – was temporarily blocked by a federal appeals court in early November.

“We know vaccine requirements work…We are confident in the government’s authority to promote economy and efficiency in federal contracting through its vaccine requirement and the Department of Justice will vigorously defend it in court,” a White House spokesperson told Reuters on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration said a total of 92% of U.S. federal workers have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

President Joe Biden unveiled regulations in September to increase the U.S. adult vaccination rate beyond the current 71% as a way of fighting the pandemic, which has killed more than 750,000 Americans and has weighed on the economy.

Earlier this week, the White House told federal agencies they could delay punishing thousands of federal workers who failed to comply with a Nov. 22 COVID-19 vaccination deadline.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Chizu Nomiyama and Mark Heinrich)

New York must allow religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine mandate, judge rules

By Tom Hals and Nate Raymond

(Reuters) -A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that New York state cannot impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on healthcare workers without allowing their employers to consider religious exemption requests.

U.S. District Judge David Hurd in Albany, New York, ruled that the state’s workplace vaccination requirement conflicted with healthcare workers’ federally protected right to seek religious accommodations from their employers.

The ruling provides a test case as vaccine mandate opponents gear up to fight plans by President Joe Biden’s administration to extend COVID-19 inoculation requirements to tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans.

Vaccines have become highly politicized in the United States, where only 66% of Americans are vaccinated, well short of the initial goals of the Biden administration.

Seventeen healthcare workers opposed to the mandate sued, saying the requirement violated their rights under the U.S. Constitution and a federal civil rights law requiring employers to reasonably accommodate employees’ religious beliefs.

Hurd agreed, saying the state’s order “clearly” conflicted with their right to seek religious accommodations.

“The court rightly recognized that yesterday’s ‘front line heroes’ in dealing with COVID cannot suddenly be treated as disease-carrying villains and kicked to the curb by the command of a state health bureaucracy,” said Christopher Ferrara, a lawyer for the workers at the conservative Thomas More Society.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, vowed in a statement to fight the decision, saying her “responsibility as governor is to protect the people of this state, and requiring health care workers to get vaccinated accomplishes that.”

At least 24 states have imposed vaccine requirements on workers, usually in healthcare.

New York’s Department of Health on Aug. 26 ordered healthcare professionals to be vaccinated by Sept. 27 and the order did not allow for the customary religious exemptions.

Hurd issued a temporary restraining order on Sept. 14 in favor of the workers while he considered whether to issue a preliminary injunction.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Peter Cooney)

U.S. Labor Department issues emergency COVID-19 rule for healthcare workers

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Labor issued an emergency rule on Thursday for controlling COVID-19 and protecting workers in healthcare settings, but stopped short of extending the rule to other high-risk industries.

Hospitals, nursing homes and other health facilities will be required within 14 days to implement the rule that covers face masks, ventilation and requirements for screening and limiting patients and visitors.

The rule by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) aligns with existing non-binding guidance from the agency, but gives workers greater leverage to demand protections and provides for stricter enforcement and fines.

The agency will issue further non-binding guidance for unvaccinated workers in high-risk industries later on Thursday.

Labor unions and workplace safety advocates have pushed for the emergency temporary standard since the start of the pandemic and wanted the rules to apply to meatpacking, transport and other sectors that suffered clusters of severe COVID-19 outbreaks.

“We believe we are targeting and focusing on workers at the highest risk,” Jim Frederick, the acting director of OSHA, told Reuters.

He said OSHA is adding inspectors and will provide other high-risk sectors with education, training and assistance in complying with non-binding guidance.

With the pandemic receding, business groups could challenge the healthcare rule by arguing it should have been adopted through a slower rule-making process with public comment, rather than the emergency process used when there is a “grave danger.”

Under the Trump Administration, OSHA focused on issuing non-binding guidance which the agency said allowed for greater flexibility during a rapidly changing outbreak.

On Wednesday, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh was criticized at a hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives by Republican lawmakers who disagreed with the need for an emergency rule.

“Let’s let people go back to work in a normal fashion,” said Rep. Tim Walberg, a Republican from Michigan.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Additional reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Bill Berkrot)

Remdesivir appears safe for seriously ill children; patients may not pose highest risk to hospital staff

By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) – The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Antiviral remdesivir appears safe for children

The antiviral drug remdesivir appears to be as safe and effective for use in children with COVID-19 as in adults, according to the largest study to date of children with severe COVID-19 who received the drug. Remdesivir, sold by Gilead Sciences Inc under the brand name Veklury, shortens time to recovery in adults with COVID-19. It is not yet approved for children under age 12. In March 2020, Gilead began accepting doctors’ requests for compassionate use of remdesivir in critically ill children with COVID-19. In the new study of 77 children in the United States, UK, Italy and Spain, “remdesivir was well tolerated, with a low incidence of serious adverse events,” related to the drug, researchers reported on Wednesday in Pediatrics. Within four weeks of starting treatment, 88% of the children had decreased need for oxygen support, 83% had recovered and 73% were discharged. Among those requiring mechanical ventilation, 90% were able to be taken off the ventilators. A randomized controlled trial is underway to confirm that the high level of recovery was due to the effects of remdesivir, the researchers said. An editorial published with the study said: “Although morbidity and mortality rates differ, children hospitalized with acute COVID-19 often have a similar disease course as adults. Children are also likely to have a similar response to remdesivir as adults.”

Patients may not pose highest COVID-19 risk for hospital staff

U.S. healthcare workers on the frontlines of the pandemic who become sick with COVID-19 are more likely to have acquired the infection in the community than through patient care, new research suggests. At a major Wisconsin medical center, researchers investigated likely sources of infections by analyzing the gene sequences of the virus obtained on swab samples from 95 healthcare workers and their patients. Only 11% of participants’ infections could be traced to a coworker and only 4% to a patient, the researchers reported in Clinical Infectious Diseases. They said their observations align with recent studies evaluating healthcare-associated infections in the Netherlands and in the UK, and with another recent study that found the most important risk factor for COVID-19 was the rate of the disease in surrounding communities, not workplace factors. “It appears that healthcare personnel most commonly become infected with SARS-CoV-2 via community exposure,” the researchers conclude. “This emphasizes the ongoing importance of mask-wearing, physical distancing, robust testing programs, and rapid distribution of vaccines.”

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Virginia law denies benefit to some healthcare workers who refuse COVID-19 vaccine

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) – Virginia has passed a law making it easier for some healthcare workers who become ill with COVID-19 to collect medical expenses or lost wages.

But there’s a catch: the law excludes healthcare workers who are offered a vaccine at work and refuse it.

The bill, retroactive to March 12, 2020, was signed into law by Governor Ralph Northam late on Wednesday, according to an aide to Chris Hurst, a member of the state House of Delegates who drafted the legislation.

The new law presumes that death or disability from COVID-19 for healthcare workers who have had contact with a known COVID positive patient is an occupational hazard, allowing them to collect workers compensation insurance benefits.

The bill allows potentially hundreds of workers to claim benefits they were previously denied because of the difficulty of proving where a worker was infected with COVID-19.

If, however, the employer offered a vaccine and a worker refused, the presumption does not apply. The bill contains an exception for people with a medical condition that puts them at risk from a vaccine.

Nearly one-third of Americans have received at least one shot to date.

Similar bills have been introduced in Illinois, Indiana and Maryland as states test ways to encourage vaccines without triggering a backlash over government mandates.

“It’s this cowardly way of trying to sort of implement a mandate through the backdoor that you know you probably couldn’t get away with through the body politic explicitly,” said Mike Duff, a professor at University of Wyoming College of Law.

Critics worry about tying a benefit to vaccines that have been approved only on an emergency basis.

Dr. Liz Mumper, a Virginia pediatrician, said: “Whenever there is risk to an individual, there must be choice.”

In the United States, the workers compensation system largely protects employers from lawsuits, while allowing workers to collect benefits for injuries without having to prove fault or negligence. The system was designed for factory accidents, not airborne illnesses.

Only 1% of healthcare workers in Virginia have been awarded COVID-19 workers compensation benefits, according to the Virginia Nurses Association.

Some legal experts and proponents of the Virginia bill say it is lawful for states to offer incentives to take the vaccine and that doing so will make the workplace safer.

“If you choose not to get the vaccine, you have to adopt some amount of personal risk,” Hurst said in an interview.

Attorneys who specialize in workers compensation said the vaccine requirement was similar to safety protocols such as hard hats, which must be followed for an injured worker to claim benefits.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Lisa Shumaker and Howard Goller)

‘One-way road to freedom’: Johnson sets out cautious lockdown exit plan

By William James and Elizabeth Piper

LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled a map out of lockdown for England on Monday that would keep some businesses shuttered until the summer, saying caution was necessary to ensure there were no reversals on a “one-way road to freedom”.

After imposing one of the strictest lockdowns in the western world in January to counter a highly contagious variant of the coronavirus, Johnson said Britain was now in a position to enjoy the fruits of one of the world’s fastest vaccine programs.

Starting in two weeks with the reopening of schools, the phased plan will go through four stages, with at least five weeks in between each stage. The final step, when most restrictions will be lifted, will not start until June 21 at the earliest.

Britain and the world would not eliminate COVID-19 altogether, Johnson said. “And we cannot persist indefinitely with restrictions that debilitate our economy, our physical and mental well-being, and the life chances of our children,” Johnson told parliament.

“And that is why it is so crucial that this roadmap is cautious but also irreversible. We’re setting out on, what I hope and believe, is a one-way road to freedom.”

With almost 130,000 fatalities, Britain has suffered the world’s fifth-highest official death toll from the pandemic and its economy has seen its biggest crash in over 300 years.

But in two months it has already managed to provide an initial vaccine dose to more than a quarter of the population, the fastest rollout of any big country, making it a test case for governments worldwide hoping to return life to normal.

Even with encouraging data on the impact of vaccines, the British government’s cautious approach highlights how slow a process it will likely be for many countries.

UNDER PRESSURE

Johnson has come under pressure, including from many in his Conservative Party, to allow more freedoms to millions stuck at home and offer hope to firms forced to close.

Under his plan schools will reopen on March 8, freeing parents who have had to juggle work and home schooling.

However, easing of social mixing bans will initially be limited and the government will ask people to work from home when possible for some weeks until it has completed a review into social distancing at some point before the summer.

At the end of March, a small number of people will be able to mix outdoors, but non-essential shops, and outdoor-only service in restaurants and pubs, will not reopen until April 12 at the earliest.

As the plan unfolds, lawmakers will have a chance to vote on specific steps. Authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which are responsible for their own public health, will also ease restrictions over the coming months.

There was mixed reaction from business leaders to the plan. The Confederation of British Industry said it offered hope, but the hospitality industry said it would be hard for many businesses to survive until they could reopen.

“Even with the prime minister’s new roadmap, the future of thousands of firms and millions of jobs still hangs by a thread,” said Adam Marshall, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce.

There were widespread calls for finance minister Rishi Sunak to extend support, such as schemes that have paid the salaries of workers sent home because of the pandemic. An announcement will not come until Sunak delivers his budget next month, but Johnson promised not to “pull the rug out”.

“For the duration of the pandemic the government will continue to do whatever it takes to protect jobs and livelihoods across the UK,” Johnson told parliament.

SPEEDY VACCINE ROLL-OUT

Johnson, who was treated in intensive care for COVID-19 last year, has been forced to juggle pressure from Conservative lawmakers to restart the economy and from scientific advisers who fear a resurgence of the virus if he unlocks too quickly.

“The message that comes out of all of the modelling is … get (infection) numbers down before you start releasing, go slowly, (and) go in blocks that you can measure the effect of after four or five weeks,” the government’s top science adviser Patrick Vallance told reporters.

England’s vaccine campaign is significantly reducing cases, with a drop of around 70% in infections among healthcare workers who have had a first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, health officials said on Monday.

Britain moved faster than most countries to secure vaccine supplies and has been inoculating people rapidly since December, a strategy that has driven sterling higher on hopes of an economic rebound. The pound hit a new three-year high of $1.4050 in early London trading on Monday.

Some 17.7 million Britons, over a quarter of the 67 million population, have now received a first dose, behind only Israel and the United Arab Emirates in vaccinations per capita.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Smout, Estelle Shirbon, Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton, David Milliken, writing by Michael Holden and Elizabeth Piper, editing by Giles Elgood)

Vaccinations under way, U.S. turns to educating skeptics, economic aid

(Reuters) – The United States extended its rollout of the first authorized COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, inoculating healthcare workers with an eye toward convincing skeptical Americans to get their shots and contain a pandemic that has killed more than 300,000 people.

The first Americans outside clinical trials started receiving the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE on Monday, three days after it won U.S. emergency-use authorization.

By day’s end, vaccine shipments had made it to nearly all of the 145 U.S. distribution sites pre-selected to receive the initial batch of doses, with a number of major hospital systems launching immunizations immediately.

The Pfizer vaccine requires two doses three weeks apart, as does the Moderna vaccine that could also receive emergency-use authorization this week.

In one of many made-for-TV injections, New York City intensive care nurse Sandra Lindsay received the first shot in the arm, saying “healing is coming” and that, “I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe.”

But just as large numbers of Americans have called the pandemic a hoax and rejected public health guidelines to wear face masks and avoid crowds, only 61% of respondents in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll said they were open to getting vaccinated.

“The communication of public health is the No. 1 issue,” Dr. Rob Davidson, an emergency room physician in Michigan and director of the Committee to Protect Medicare, told MSNBC television on Tuesday.

“We’re really hopeful in this next phase that we can all come together with one voice to convince people this is important,” Davidson said.

COVID-19 has killed 301,085 people in the United States and infected 16.5 million, overwhelming the healthcare system with a record 110,163 patients hospitalized as of Monday, according to a Reuters tally of official data.

The pandemic has also inflicted economic pain as states and localities imposed stay-at-home orders and closed businesses, putting millions out of work.

The U.S. Congress on Monday inched toward passing the first COVID-19 relief bill since April, possibly extending aid to the unemployed, small businesses, and vaccine distribution. The COVID-19 aid could be attached to a critical spending measure that must be passed by Friday to avoid a federal government shutdown.

The process of shipping the first 2.9 million doses of vaccine began on Sunday, 11 months after the United States documented its first case of COVID-19.

Moncef Slaoui, top adviser to the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program, has said the plan is to have about 40 million vaccine doses from Pfizer and Moderna – enough for 20 million people – distributed by year’s end.

It will take months before vaccines become widely available to the public at large.

“This is the most difficult vaccine rollout in history,” U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News on Monday.

(Reporting by Reuters staff; Editing by Giles Elgood)

U.S. prepares for first COVID-19 shots as another vaccine candidate emerges

By Daniel Trotta

(Reuters) – U.S. officials expect to begin inoculating Americans against the novel coronavirus by mid-December as another global drug company on Monday unveiled promising trial results on a vaccine candidate, providing hope as the pace of infections accelerated.

The head of the U.S. campaign to rapidly deploy a vaccine that U.S. healthcare workers and other high-risk people could start getting shots produced by Pfizer Inc within a day or two of regulatory consent next month.

“I would expect, maybe on day two after approval on the 11th or 12th of December, hopefully the first people will be immunized across the United States,” Dr. Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for “Operation Warp Speed,” told CNN on Sunday.

With many Americans traveling and potentially increasing their risk ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, the United States has surpassed 12 million infections and the death toll has climbed to more than 255,000 since the pandemic began.

Coronavirus hospitalizations have surged nearly 50% over the past two weeks as the pace of new infections quickened, and the average number of new COVID-19 deaths reported in United States has been increasing for 12 days.

The latest vaccine breakthrough came on Monday as British company AstraZeneca said its vaccine could be 90% effective without any serious side effects. The vaccine would give the world another important tool against the pandemic and one that is potentially cheaper to make, easier to distribute and faster to scale up than those of rivals.

The vaccine was 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 when administered in two different doses a month apart, late-stage trials showed.

The British drugmaker said it would have as many as 200 million doses by the end of 2020 and 700 million doses could be ready globally as soon as the end of the first quarter of 2021.

Pfizer, working with German partner BioNTech, says its vaccine was 95% effective against infection from the highly contagious respiratory virus.

Other pharmaceutical companies making progress include Moderna Inc, which is expected to seek separate approval later in December, and Johnson & Johnson, which is working on a single-dose vaccine.

In the United States, the first people to receive the Pfizer vaccine would likely include doctors, nurses and front-line emergency medical personnel, as well as those at the highest risk of severe illness and death from the virus, Slaoui said.

But U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams expressed concern that Americans who are dismissive of science and skeptical about vaccines may discourage people from getting their jabs.

“What I’d hate is for us to have a vaccine that could end this pandemic but people don’t trust it,” Adams told the ABC News show “Good Morning America” on Monday.

“I’m just excited we now have three vaccines out there because when you’re trying to immunize the entire planet we want to have as many different tools in our arsenal as possible,” Adams said.

Adams warned Americans that holiday parties “can be super-spreader events,” while New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy urged people to scale back or cancel Thanksgiving plans.

“We’ve pleading with people: Please, God, do the right thing,” Murphy told “Good Morning America.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom said late Sunday he would quarantine for 14 days after three of his children were exposed to a California Highway Patrol officer who tested positive for the virus.

(Additionl reporting by Lisa Lambert, Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu, Kate Holton, Josephine Mason and Kate Kelland; Editing by Bernadette Baum)