State employees, health workers must prove shots or mask up. What’s that mean in the Valley?
Monday’s announcement that health care workers and state employees in California will soon be required to prove they’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19 – or else wear face coverings and get frequent coronavirus tests – could affect 100,000 people or more in Fresno County and neighboring central California counties.
The rules come as the Valley and the entire state see the number of new coronavirus cases climbing at a pace not seen in months. On Monday morning, 332 new COVID-19 infections were confirmed in Fresno County since Friday, as well as six additional fatalities from the virus and the respiratory disease it causes.
The new cases drove the rolling seven-day average of new infections to 10 per day per 100,000 residents – the highest the daily average has been since early April. It’s also almost five times higher than the daily rate from mid-June, when California eliminated its Blueprint for a Safer Economy – the color-coded set of rules over the extent to which activities and businesses could reopen from broad restrictions put in place last year to limit the spread of COVID-19.
Fresno County’s interim health officer, Dr. Rais Vohra, said his office was also notified Monday of nine new cases of the Delta variant of coronavirus, a more contagious form of the virus that emerged in India last fall and has spread around the world, responsible for more than 80% of new COVID-19 cases over the past month in the U.S. and in California. Fresno County now has 42 known Delta variant cases, six times more than at the start of July.
“It’s a very interesting moment in this pandemic,” Vohra told The Bee on Monday. “The state has been messaging about this in no uncertain terms to align with what the (U.S. Centers for Disease Control) has been saying, that this is very rapidly becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
“The people who are at highest risk, driving the transmissions and hospitalizations, are those who have yet to be vaccinated, and we’re seeing it in younger and younger folks,” he added. “Kids who are under 12 can’t get the vaccine, but unfortunately they can get the virus. So they’re going to be driving some of this transmission, especially because the Delta variant is proving to be quite contagious.”
“For those who are over 12, and really adults who frankly should know better, for them not to be vaccinated puts everyone at risk. Something had to be done to protect the community,” Vohra said of the announcement by the California Department of Public Health and the state’s Department of Human Resources.
Still some wiggle room
Vohra said he interprets the state’s new rules as strengthening what he called “layers of protection” for the public against the virus, re-emphasizing the need for face coverings and frequent testing for people who aren’t yet vaccinated.
“I think the state is saying, ‘How can we have an early warning system to tell us about outbreaks in our most high-risk areas?” he said. “And our most high-risk areas haven’t changed at all – our hospitals, clinics, congregate settings, skilled nursing, homeless shelters, jails. How do we prevent these outbreaks and limit them as much as possible? We have to return to those layers of protection.”
Vohra said some people have legitimate reasons for not getting the vaccine, including religious or medical exemptions. They won’t be forced to get the shots – but they will have to wear masks and get tested more frequently.
“I’m sure this is going to nudge some people into going ahead and getting their vaccine,” he said, “because they’re not going to want to be inconvenienced by having to go get tested twice a week and having a swab jabbed up their nose, and have to wear surgical masks or N95 masks, which are not that comfortable.”
“In some ways, it is going to tip the balance in the right direction and get more people vaccinated,” Vohra added.
At least one Fresno hospital has already put rules in place requiring its employees to get vaccinated or validate a religious or medical exemption, or lose their jobs. Trinity Health, the Michigan-based parent company of Saint Agnes Medical Center, issued the order to all of its hospitals across the country on July 8, setting a Sept. 21 deadline for submitting proof of vaccination. “Employees who do not meet criteria for exemption and fail to show proof of vaccination will face termination of employment,” the company said in its announcement.
Kelley Sanchez, a spokesperson for Saint Agnes, said the Fresno hospital has almost 2,900 employees, and believes about 75% of them have been vaccinated.
Dr. Walter Egerton, chief medical officer at Saint Agnes, said he supported the state’s new requirement.
“I believe it is essential,” he said Monday. “First and foremost, the duty of health care providers is to keep our community safe, which means keeping ourselves safe and keeping our patients safe.”
“We know by science and by what we’ve seen so far that vaccinations for COVID-19 are the best way available to stem this pandemic,” he added. Requiring proof of vaccines, he added, “is not an unreasonable request on our part.”
Even before Trinity’s companywide mandate, Egerton said, Saint Agnes was “very aggressive” in getting employees vaccinated when the shots first became available in mid-December.
Dr. Tom Utecht, senior vice president and chief medical officer for Community Medical Centers in Fresno and Clovis, said that more than 60% of that health system’s workforce is fully vaccinated.
“As we have throughout the pandemic, Community Health System will continue to follow the guidance from California Department of Public Health, Fresno County Department of Public Health and CDC on COVID-19 safety protocols, including healthcare workers vaccinations,” Utecht said Monday. “We continue to strongly encourage all who are able — employees, physicians, partners, patients, visitors and the public — to get the COVID-19 vaccine to protect our frontline workers and our community.
As of last week, Community Medical reported that 84 of its staff were unavailable to work because they were isolating because of exposure to COVID-19, including 18 with confirmed positive cases of the virus.
In neighboring Tulare County, Kaweah Health in Visalia – formerly Kaweah Delta District Hospital – does not require vaccinations of its 5,100 employees, a hospital spokesperson told The Bee. But if employees aren’t vaccinated, they must wear masks on the job.
About 55% of the Kaweah Health employees have provided proof of vaccination to date.
The scope of the new rule
Occupational employment figures from the state Employment Development Department illustrate just how many people could be affected by the state’s new order. Fresno County has about 46,000 health care workers in both private and public settings, from medical managers to doctors, nurses, technicians, orderlies in hospitals to physicians and staff at health clinics and skilled-nursing facilities, to home health support workers.
There are about 5,690 more in Kings County, almost 6,500 in Madera County, about 7,600 in Merced County and almost 15,000 in Tulare County, bringing the health care workforce in the five-county region to more than 83,000.
But the rule also applies to state employees in whatever setting they work, even outside of health care. That includes a range of state agencies with offices in the Valley, including faculty, managers and staff at state colleges and universities. In Fresno County, there are approximately 12,000 state employees, and about 10,000 more in Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties.
Vohra said the rules reflect a significant shift in the pandemic, including the increase of the Delta variant, over the past couple of months.
“We have to react to the reality that we’re experiencing. When our numbers were going down, our transmission rate was going lower, it made sense that testing wasn’t absolutely necessary,” he said. “But this pandemic forces us to adapt our strategy depending on what we’re seeing on the ground.”
And what’s happening on the ground in the Valley are not only more cases, but rising hospitalizations of patients with COVID-19. That, in turn, increases the exposure that health care workers face in hospitals and medical offices, Vohra added.
This story was originally published July 26, 2021 at 2:15 PM.
