Employee Vaccination Rates Among NCW Hospitals and Health Care Providers Varies by Wide Margin

The vaccination rate of hospitals and doctor's offices in North Central Washington varies by a wide range.

Chelan Douglas Health District Chief Health Officer Dr. James Wallace says there's almost a 15 percent swing among its partners.

"Across the region, wer're seeing anywhere from 1% to as high as 15% of folks employed not getting vaccinated," said Wallace.

Wallace identified the provider with the highest level of unvaccinated workers as being in the northern part the region.

He said the provider started firing staffs members who were not vaccinated as soon as the vaccination order for health care workers went into effect Monday.

Wallace verified that Confluence Health had reached a vaccination rate of about 91 percent before the order was in place.

Meanwhile, the Washington Hospital Association has reported that cases, hospitalizations and deaths from the virus overall have all been dropping in recent weeks.

Dr. Wallace acknowledged similar trends in Chelan Douglas Health District's region.

For example, new cases peaked at about 1,100 per 100,000 people over 14 days during the summer, and have fallen to 608.5 per 100,000 as of Thursday morning.

Wallace said case levels will need to fall much lower before safeguards against the virus can be relaxed.

"So it's still a really high case rate that we're seeing," said Wallace. "We're not ready to decrease any of the precautionary or protective measures that we have in place, because we still need to drive it down a lot lower than it's been."