Washington Hospitals Expected to Lose 2-5% of Staff Over Resistance to COVID-19 Vaccinations

The Washington Hospital Association is expecting hospitals to lose 2-5 percent of their staff from failures to get COVID-19 vaccinations.

Association CEO Cassie Sauer says it'll take several weeks to find out just how many workers will leave their jobs over the requirement.

"We probably won't know the full impact of how many hospital staff are leaving because of vaccine requirement until early November, maybe even mid-November," said Sauer.

Sauer made the comments during the Hospital Association's Monday morning COVID-19 briefing.

Many hospitals are putting employees on leave rather than firing them in the hope that they'll get their shots.

An order from Governor Jay Inslee requires all health care workers to be vaccinated for COVID-19 by next Monday.

Resistance to vaccinations among medical workers is most heavily concentrated at rural eastern Washington hospitals.

There's also concern about resistance to vaccinations among workers at long term care centers and EMS services.

"There's concern about vaccine compliance in those settings, and that we could end up with long term care centers that are unable to accept patients, or might not even be able to care for their patients that they have in house, and also that we could have a lack of ambulance services that need to take a patient to the hospital," Sauer said. "

She said there have been cases where people have been instructed to take patients to hospitals on their own because of a shortage of ambulances available.

The 2-5 percent loss of medical staff at hospitals translates to roughly between 3,000 and 7,000 employees statewide.

Overall hospitalizations from COVID-19 across Washington are on a downward trend, but Sauer says there's concern that the rate may be leveling off.

"We were seeing about a 10 percent decline every week in the last few weeks, and this very last week we only saw a 2 percent decline, so we are worried that the decline in plateauing," said Sauer.

COVID-19 hospitalizations are down to 1,100 from a recent spike up to 1,700 in the state.

Sauer said COVID-19 deaths are down, but remain high at 15-20 per day.

"These are people getting all the treatment available, the best treatment we can give them and they're still dying, Sauer said. "This is a deadly disease, and I think people seem to be forgetting that."

She said the current death rate is equal to a jet crashing every week in Seattle or Spokane, or a duck boat crashing every day.

In addition, there was also concern being expressed during the weekly COVID-19 briefing that pregnant women are resisting the vaccinations at a higher level than the general public.

University of Washington Medicine Chief Medical Officer Dr.Timothy Dellit said there is now strong evidence to support using COVID-19 vaccines on pregnant women.

Sauer pointed out there's positive news with vaccines for 5-11 year-olds getting closer to approval on a nationwide level. She said the dosage would be different from vaccines currently available.