Work continues to convince a small percentage of staff at Chatham-Kent Health Alliance (CKHA) to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
CKHA President and CEO Lori Marshall said on Monday a total of 54 of the roughly 1,300 staff at the Chatham and Wallaceburg sites are still hesitant about getting the shot. She noted seven have a medical exemption and will need to get tested twice a week, 44 have declined the shot, and 10 refuse to provide their vaccination status.
Marshall said the hospital is trying to work with the hesitant employees to determine what their barriers are. She is worried about losing staff, but said work is underway to prevent that and she believes enhanced recruiting efforts and other strategies will allow the hospital to continue operating with proper staffing levels.
New Chief Nursing Executive at CKHA, Meredith Whitehead, said some staff still feel the vaccines are unsafe due to online misinformation and some are demanding freedom of choice. Whitehead noted the the vaccine hesitancy is spread out right across the entire hospital and isn't coming from any one particular section. She also said some part time nursing positions have already been converted to full time and jobs have already been posted for those employees who have already told the hospital they won't be continuing after the vaccination deadline of October 31, 2021.
Marshall noted the hospital only had 85 per cent of staff vaccinated early on and could have lost about 200 employees to illness if a vaccination policy was not put in place. She said that 54 is a significant but low number and hopes it's lower at the end of the month.
"I don't want to downplay the impact of losing staff. It's not something we want to have happen and we're trying to mitigate that risk as best as we can," said Marshall.
CKHA has given its employees until the end of October to get fully vaccinated or their employment will be terminated. Doctors who don't get vaccinated will have their hospital privileges suspended indefinitely. Marshall noted that nearly all CKHA doctors are vaccinated, while employees continue to have a 95.4 per cent vaccination rate.
Chatham-Kent continues to have one of the lowest vaccination rates in the province and one of the highest COVID-19 rates. Marshall said that creates undue stress and exhaustion on her workers, which leads to higher demand for sick days because they're working a lot of overtime.
"I wake up every morning with a knot in my stomach before I look at the numbers in the hospital. It's really concerning to me," she said. "I can't emphasize enough how difficult it is for everyone here working at CKHA with this high burden of COVID positive disease in our community right now."
Elective surgeries still haven't been cancelled at CKHA yet but Marshall said it could happen if the community is not careful and more residents don't get vaccinated. She said some surgeries such as gynecological, gall, hip, knee, and cataract procedures are actually being increased to meet targets and clear up the backlog.
New Hospital Board Chair Alan Wildeman said continuing non-urgent surgeries is a big quality of life issue for the many who need them.
"The board is very impressed with how the administration, the staff, nurses, physicians, everybody has been able to maintain a level of service in surgeries with an eye to deal with some of the backlog during a time when wave four of the pandemic is putting significant pressure on the ICUs and so many aspects of the hospital's operations," said Wildeman.
Even though there have been recent calls for hospitals to start denying care to unvaccinated patients unless they promise to get the shot, Marshall said the hospital can't do that because it's legally and ethically wrong. Some believe that those still waiting for elective surgeries are being needlessly held up by unvaccinated patients taking up crucial hospital beds and resources.
CKHA is reporting 12 COVID-19 patients at the Chatham site. Four are not residents of Chatham-Kent and only two are fully vaccinated. Hospital officials said seven COVID-19 patients are in the 10 bed ICU and two of them are on ventilators.
Chatham-Kent Public Health is reporting two new small school outbreaks at St. Elizabeth in Wallaceburg and St. Ursula in Chatham to bring the total number of local outbreaks to seven. Public health officials also reported that the large outbreak at Praise Fellowship Church in Chatham is over. The number of local active cases is up to 122 after 48 new cases and 33 resolved cases.