Good Samaritan Hospital officials have confirmed that all employees must be vaccinated for COVID-19 by Nov. 1, pending full approval by the Food and Drug Administration.
After what seemed to be an internal email dated July 26 began circulating on social media this week, Good Samaritan confirmed that employees will need to be vaccinated for the coronavirus this fall as the COVID-19 vaccines, which were given emergency use authorization by the FDA late last year, are expected to receive full approval as early as next month.
Hospital CEO Rob McLin said in a statement issued Friday afternoon that the decision was made with “the safety of patients and employees” in mind.
“Good Samaritan has made the decision to join the rapidly growing number of healthcare organizations across the country to require COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of employment,” he said in an emailed statement.
“It is anticipated that full FDA approval will be granted for the Pfizer vaccine by the end of August, thus giving unvaccinated employees two months to complete the vaccination process,” he writes. “Because of the overwhelming volume of data supporting the safety and efficacy of each of the vaccines, our administration strongly believes this requirement is the best decision to protect our patients and employees.”
He goes on to say that exemptions may be granted “following the same process that is currently in place for other required vaccines.”
Such vaccine requirements are not new to Good Samaritan. The hospital for years has required everyone to be vaccinated against MMR, varicella and pertussis. Good Samaritan, too, has required employees to receive the influenza vaccine every year, subject only to “medical contraindications and bona fide religious beliefs,” McLin’s statement reads.
The announcement came just two days before the county’s rating on the Indiana COVID-19 dashboard jumped past yellow and right back into orange for the first time in six months.
With dozens of active cases locally and a 17% positivity rate, the county returned to the second most severe designation, a spot it hasn’t seen since December 2020.
Good Samaritan, too, is once again seeing some inpatient cases of COVID, and with clear community spread, county health officer Dr. Alan Stewart this week urged people to begin masking once again, especially when in confined spaces.
He believes this new surge is likely due to the delta mutation of the coronavirus, which left a trail of death across India and has now been found in 124 countries. It accounts for roughly 83% of new positive cases in the U.S.
Though the mutation does not seem to be any more virulent than other strains, it has proven to be much more contagious than the original virus as well as the B117 strain, which originated in Britain last winter.
Knox County didn’t, however, record any new cases of the coronavirus on Friday. That is, however, after recording more than 20 new confirmed cases in just five days.
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