A large North Carolina hospital network says that it has fired nearly 200 workers for failing to take a Covid-19 vaccine.
Dr. David H. Priest, chief for safety for Novant Health, said at a Tuesday press briefing that roughly 175 staffers did not comply with their vaccine mandate deadline.
"By doing that, by not getting vaccinated, they voluntarily resign," Priest said.
Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C. Google Maps
The departures will not impact staffing at the hospital system of over 35,000 employees, Priest said, because the hospital has been using temporary staff for the duration of the pandemic to make up for shortages from staff falling ill with Covid.
Novant Health is a not-for-profit healthcare system headquartered in Winston-Salem that operates over 15 medical centers and numerous other facilities in North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
Priest added that one "data point that remains stagnant" is how Covid is disproportionally hospitalizing the unvaccinated at Novant Health's facilities.
"As of this morning, 97 percent of our patients with Covid-19 in our ICUs, 98 percent of Covid patients on ventilators right now are unvaccinated," Priest said. "This continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated — there are occasionally breakthrough cases, but you can still see that vaccines are holding up."
In a statement, Novant Health said the staff who obtained a religious or medical exemption will be required to use additional PPE and submit to weekly coronavirus testing.
"We are thrilled that the vast majority of team members gave Novant Health’s patients and visitors, as well as our team members, better protection against COVID-19 regardless of where they are in our health system," Novant Health said in a statement.
Priest said "it is okay" if a small number of people are upset about the vaccine requirement.
"We have been in a deadly pandemic for 19 months, there are 680,000 Americans who have died, and we cannot contribute to that number a single time, one is too many," he said.
President Joe Biden in September announced new vaccine mandates impacting federal workers, contractors, as well as Medicaid and Medicare providers — including hospitals — after vaccination rates lagged following a spring peak.
Novant Health's firings are one of the largest staff departures since hospitals began requiring Covid-19 vaccinations this year.
In Houston, over 150 people were fired or resigned in June because of the Houston Methodist hospital system's vaccine requirement.
At RWJBarnabasHealth in New Jersey, six were fired in June for vaccine noncompliance.