A LARGE number of health care professionals and frontline staff are refusing to take the coronavirus vaccine, according to a new survey.
Staff first in line to receive the Moderna-produced Covid-19 shot are either hesitant to take, or outright refuse, the jab – despite fears January willsee a sharp "post-seasonal" rise in cases of the virus.
A new report by Kaiser Family Foundation found 29% of healthcare workers were hesitant to receive the vaccine.
The research suggests the lack of vaccinations is due to recipients' concerns of potential side effects and a lack of faith in the government to ensure the vaccines were safe,
Earlier this week, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said he was "troubled" by the relatively low numbers of nursing home workers who have elected to take the vaccine – revealing nearlyr 60% of nursing home staff declined the shot.
Roughly 55 percent of surveyed New York Fire Department firefighters said they would not get the coronavirus vaccine, the Firefighters Association president said last month.
The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that hospital and public officials in Riverside said an estimated 50% of frontline workers in the county refused the vaccine.
Dr. Nikhila Juvvadi, the chief clinical officer at Chicago's Loretto Hospital, said that a survey was administered in December that showed around 40 percent of the hospital staff said they would not get vaccinated.
Dr. Juvvadi told NPR that "there's no transparency between pharmaceutical companies or research companies — or the government sometimes — on how many people from" Black and Latino communities were involved in the research of the vaccine.
It comes after a separate study published in The Lancet over the summer found "healthcare workers of color were more than twice as likely as their white counterparts" to test positive for the coronavirus.
And a a Pew Research Center poll published in December, vaccine skepticism is highest among Black America.
Less than 42 percent surveyed in the poll said they would definitely, or probably, accept the Covid-19 vaccine.
Last month, Government officials said they planned to have 40 million doses available by the end of 2020 – which is enough to fully vaccinate 20 million Americans with the two doses required in the course of treatment.
But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says less than 3 million Americans have received the first dose of the vaccine, and 14 million doses in distribution.
The new year is off to a grim start in the United States with more than 2,000 Americans dying from coronavirus yesterday.
For the 31st day in a row, more than 100,000 patients were hospitalized nationwide on the first day of 2021.
At least 125,057 patients are battling Covid – the third day hospitalizations exceeded 125,000 – according to the COVID tracking project.
Things could become even more deadly with the discovery of a new "super Covid" strain from the UK in the Golden State.
A man in his 30s with no travel history was diagnosed with the highly contagious strain in San Diego.
Covid has killed 347,788 in the US, or about one in every 950 Americans, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The US also has the 16th-highest number of national per capita Covid deaths in the world.
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