How many health care workers on MS Coast are vaccinated for COVID? Here’s a breakdown.
Many Mississippi Coast hospital employees remain unvaccinated, even after the recent deadly delta surge when health care officials say employee vaccination rates rose quickly.
At Memorial Hospital at Gulfport, 71% of its over 5,000 employees are fully vaccinated, while 53% of Singing River Health System’s 3,500 employees have received both shots.
Merit Health in Biloxi would not provide a percentage of vaccinated staff members. A spokesperson said, “a majority of our caregivers have chosen — and some are continuing to choose — to be vaccinated.”
Ochsner Health system did not respond to the Sun Herald’s request, though 69% of Ochsner employees across Louisiana and Mississippi are vaccinated according to an Aug. 24 press release from the company.
Spokespeople for Memorial and Singing River, South Mississippi’s two largest health systems, said their vaccination rates sharply increased during the delta wave, though some nurses still say they won’t get the shots.
All the health systems tout vaccination rates higher than local averages, which linger around 35% on the Coast. Across Mississippi, rates average 45% and nationally around 56% are fully vaccinated.
During the peak of the Coast’s delta variant surge from late August through September, more Mississippians died and were hospitalized than any other point of the pandemic, overwhelming hospital staff and resources. The vast majority of those hospitalized and dying from the virus were unvaccinated.
Delta surge spurs vaccinations
Memorial Hospital has the highest vaccination rates among health care employees on the Coast.
During a live Q&A with the Sun Herald in mid-September, Memorial Hospital Chief Medical Information Officer Michael Wiederhold noted that he’d seen an improvement in staff vaccination rates during the delta surge, which started around mid-July.
“I’m very proud of the fact that vaccine rates have steadily increased, even for the employees at the hospital, they’ve greatly increased over the seven weeks that I’ve been here. That’s just been phenomenal,” he said.
Wiederhold came to Memorial about 10 weeks ago from central Florida, where he said rates were higher than on the northern Gulf Coast. The Orlando Sentinel this month reported that some central Florida’s health care workers also are resistant to the vaccine.
Central Florida’s total vaccination rates average around 60% while the Coast remains around 35%.
“ Our vaccine rates were markedly higher than what’s going on in the Gulf Coast,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like Mississippi got hit as hard as other areas of the country the first time… in New York, in California, and a little bit of Florida even. But once it really hit home with this delta wave, everyone got together and responded to the need.”
Singing River spokesperson Sarah Duffey said their health system quickly went from 40% to 50% fully vaccinated when delta first spiked, and rates have now plateaued around 53%.
A Merit spokesperson said the hospital last month began routine COVID-19 testing of all unvaccinated hospital and clinic staff, and the hospital is waiting for further guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services before acting on President Joe Biden’s order requiring COVID-19 vaccination for health care workers.
Ochsner mandate
Memorial, Singing River and Merit do not have vaccine mandates for their employees, unlike Louisiana-based Ochsner Health that in August announced a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for its physicians, providers and employees, saying they are required to be vaccinated by Oct. 29.
Ochsner Health, which has a sizable presence along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, last week
said it will charge a fee for spouses and domestic partners of employees enrolled 2022 health insurance benefits if they are not vaccinated.
“This is not a mandate as non-employed spouses and domestic partners can choose to select a health plan outside of Ochsner Health offerings. As with our employee vaccination policy, spouses and domestic partners with medical and religious objections will be able to file exemption requests,” Ochsner’s president and CEO Warner Thomas said in a statement.
Nurses among the most vaccine hesitant
A June survey published by the American Medical Association found 96% of practicing physicians have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and Coast health officials say that nurses are some of the most vaccine hesitant.
Singing River CEO Lee Bond has said that their health system would lose nurses if a mandate was implemented, and it would worsen the existing nursing shortage across the state — a decision Singing River cannot afford to make.
“We are not in favor of a mandate because we need to meet the highest calling which is to save as many lives as possible, and that requires both vaccinated and unvaccinated nurses to be able to meet that demand,” he said.
Some nurses were convinced to get their shots following the delta surge, however.
Ijlal Babar, pulmonologist and director of Pulmonary Critical Care at Singing River said he thinks there was an uptick because the nurses “got affected by what they were seeing in the ICU.”
“I think in the previous surge, people who were coming into the ICU were older, and the nurses didn’t identify with that. Now the nurses are seeing people who were their age, perhaps a little older or perhaps a little younger in some cases. And I think that’s what convinced them,” he said.
In August, 48-year-old Singing River nurse Becky Clemens passed away from COVID. Her close friend and colleague, fellow Ocean Springs Hospital nurse Tyler Ann Kelley said she got her vaccine the day after Clemens died.
“[Getting vaccinated] was 100% because of her, only because I would rather take the risk and have some, you know, God forbid, complications from a vaccine than suffer what she had to go through or have my family members have to go there,” Kelley said.
“She was still so healthy… she was an extremely, very, very active person. The only thing that we can do at this point is prevention. And the only thing that’s giving us some sort of hope is the vaccine, which is why I’ve realized the importance of it. You know, it really is our only hope at this point.”
Babar said that some Singing River physicians spoke with some nurses directly about getting their vaccine.
“I think that convinced some nurses as well,” he said.
This article and live event is supported by the Journalism and Public Information Fund, a fund of the Gulf Coast Community Foundation.
This story was originally published October 6, 2021 at 8:04 AM.
