NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Among the growing list of employers requiring their employees to be fully vaccinated is one of Connecticut's largest employers: Yale-New Haven Health.
The fourth-largest hospital system in the U.S. issued the mandate a couple of weeks ago stating its 30,000 employees are required to comply by the end of September.
Dr. Thomas Balcezak, Yale-New Haven Health's Chief Medical officer said one thing that will likely move the needle on vaccinations is a full approval of all COVID vaccines by the Food & Drug Administration.
"It remains a mystery to me why they have not acted and granted full approval," Balcezak said. "I mean we’ve given over 300 million doses of vaccine in the United States."
Just north of 80 percent of all Yale-New Haven Health employees are fully vaccinated and the number is growing daily with frequent vaccine fairs on each one of their five campuses.
"Since the announcement of the mandate, we have vaccinated about 670 more people," Balcezak said.
He says somewhere between 150 and 200 employees have applied for and received vaccination exemptions.
"We do allow for exemptions for certain medical reasons and for some religious reasons and we’re working through those exemptions," Balcezak says.
According to the Connecticut Department of Labor, these exemptions may lead to qualifying for unemployment, but each claim is examined individually.
"It may be feeling like this is being forced, but it’s not unlawful," said Attorney Gary Phelan, a partner in Mitchell & Sheahan, a Stratford law firm.
Phelan says employers are now receiving pushback from employees, who are already vaccinated.
"There’s a growing number feeling like now they want their employer to impose a mandatory vaccine," said Phelan.
It has literally become an arms race.
"Viruses will do what viruses do, which is mutate and we can only, the way to stop that is to keep the virus from getting into the population and having a chance to change itself," said Dr. James Cardon, an Executive Vice President for Hartford HealthCare.
Doctors say the transmissibility of the Delta variant should serve as enough motivation.
"You’re gonna get COVID-19," Yale's Balcezak said, referring to the unvaccinated.
Like Yale-New Haven Health, Hartford HealthCare is requiring employee vaccinations by the end of next month. Employees of Trinity Health of New England, which includes St. Francis Hospital in Hartford and St. Mary's Hospital of Waterbury, have a September 21 deadline. Employees of Middlesex Hospital are not required to receive the jab.
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