CEDARVILLE — Three out of every five long-term
care facility workers in Ohio have refused the coronavirus vaccine, Gov.
Mike DeWine said Wednesday.
Many remain skeptical about the vaccine’s safety, health officials
said, while others are chilled by deep-seated distrust of government or
even fringe conspiracies of malicious intent.
The rate of refusals is based on anecdotal reports from statewide
vaccination clinics, the governor said during a briefing on the state’s
coronavirus response Wednesday. By then, agencies across the state had yet to make use of even a fifth of about 529,000 vaccine doses shipped thus far.
Though the partnering pharmacies administering the vaccine in Ohio’s
nursing homes — in the Mahoning Valley, that’s Walgreens and CVS — are
“on track” to finish up their first round of vaccines in the next couple
of weeks, “the bigger concern is the number of staff that are not
taking it,” DeWine said Wednesday.
DeWine conferred on Christmas Eve about the refusals with the Ohio
Health Care Association, which represents more than 1,000 long-term care
facilities statewide, said Executive Director Pete Van Runkle.
At some of the association’s member facilities, all staff have accepted the vaccine; at others, only a fifth, he said.
Anecdotally, most of workers’ concerns are about safety — whether
this brand new vaccine, which was brought to bear at unprecedented
speed, has yet-unknown long-term side effects; specifically, an impact
on the reproductive system — but some concerns swing into the wild
fringe.
He’s also heard anecdotal reports that workers believe the vaccine
contains a microchip or that it will somehow negatively affect
minorities — “stuff that floats around on social media … it strikes one
as craziness,” he said.
“It becomes somewhat of a political issue. There’s folks that are
anti-vaccination for political reasons, too,” Van Runkle said. “It’s a
challenging issue. We knew it was before all this started. There’s just
so much sentiment out there, just in the general public, of people who
are skeptical about the vaccine.”
Since the start of vaccine distribution in Ohio, Bobbi Terwilliger, a
representative with the Youngstown-based Teamsters Local 377, has been
fielding questions from her members about the vaccine’s safety.
She represents nursing home staff like nurse aides and kitchen
workers who are part of Ohio’s first vaccination group, Phase 1A, and
among the first in the world to receive the vaccine.
When members call seeking additional information, Terwilliger advises
them to reach out to their pharmacists; she noted CVS and Walgreens
have done a good job of getting information to people with questions.
“Put it in simple terms for them,” she said. After a year of being
inundated with horrifying studies and statistics about COVID-19, “it’s
just a matter of speaking to people in plain English.”
She advises employers of places like nursing homes to approach workers who have concerns and ask about them.
“It might be something simple,” she said. “Give it a shot. Maybe it would make it a little more palatable.”
When it comes to the anxiety and confusion, Terwilliger blames the
hyper-partisan political atmosphere and stigma around public health
measures like masks and vaccines.
People are being coy about whether they’ve had the virus or gotten the vaccine, she said, fearing backlash from others online.
“There’s a lot of stigma created from our president down, about
mask-wearing and all this other garbage to the point that people just
don’t want to be harassed,” she said.
After receiving wildly mixed messages from politicians throughout the
entire pandemic, people are looking for understandable information and
don’t know where to turn.
“People are not trusting anything that’s coming out of the state and
out of the federal government. They’re just scared of putting this in
their body. They don’t know what they should do," Terwilliger said.
The association is trying to counteract misinformation with new
educational materials on vaccine science — “mythbusting,” Van Runkle
said. Facilities are also finding success with internally released
videos featuring caregivers who give their reasons for taking the
vaccine, he said.
Some facilities have even resorted to incentivizing vaccination rate goals with random prize drawings.
“It can’t just be left to happenstance,” Van Runkle said. “We have to
continue our leadership of our facilities. Our members have to continue
to try to find ways to educate and convince.”
Long-term care facility residents, however, have widely been more
accepting of the vaccine, typically 90 percent from facility to
facility, he said.
“That’s obviously a defense for those residents. Even if that staff
member comes in and is infectious, the residents aren’t gonna get it,”
he said. “The other part is to redouble our efforts to convince staff
they need to participate.”
Long-term care facility residents make up 52 percent of all confirmed
and probable COVID-19 deaths in Trumbull County; 55 percent of the
deaths in Columbiana; and 65 percent of the deaths in Mahoning.
The hospice care facility housing Renee Ciotti’s 92-year-old mother
is due to receive its first shipment of the coronavirus vaccine on Jan.
12, Ciotti said.
For seven months, Ciotti, of Salem, had been driving to her mother’s
Streetsboro assisted-living facility during two-hour windows in the
morning and afternoon, for 20-minute visits. Since transitioning her
mother into hospice care, she’s been able to visit regularly and has
heard similar concerns about the vaccine from caregivers who have turned
it down.
“I would certainly wish all of them would get the vaccine. It would
relieve a lot of stress for residents and families,” she told Mahoning Matters. “I do, however, understand why some of the younger females would refuse.
“Some might want to start a family and are unsure of the side effects down the road.”
In that regard, Van Runkle pointed to reports of women who conceived during the coronavirus vaccine trials.
Since the federal vaccine rollout for nursing homes is being done in
three visits, he hopes those who turned it down on the first visit will
“see their coworkers didn’t suffer any ill effects, or at least anything
that will convince them to step up on the second round.”
For those who pass it up entirely, DeWine warned it’s unclear when the currently scarce vaccine may come around again.
“We aren’t going to make them, but we wish they had a higher
compliance,” he said Wednesday. “Our message today is the train may not
be coming back for a while.”
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