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A current survey of San Diego County medical suppliers discovered that 1000’s have been requesting vaccine mandate exemptions, with the majority citing non secular causes.

President Biden’s new coronavirus vaccination mandate requires all federal employees and contractors, together with all healthcare employees within the nation, to obtain their pictures or lose their jobs.

However administration officers mentioned final week that the brand new federal vaccination program would permit anybody to request an exemption on “slender” non secular grounds or if that they had a qualifying incapacity, loopholes which can be comparable in California, which introduced a vaccination mandate for healthcare employees on Aug. 5 that takes impact Sept. 30.

Sharp HealthCare, San Diego’s largest well being system, reported that it had acquired greater than 700 non secular exemption requests, with UC San Diego Well being receiving 610 and Scripps Well being greater than 400. These numbers signify about 3% of every group’s whole workforce, which ranges from about 16,000 to about 22,000 employees.

Kaiser Permanente San Diego and Rady Youngsters’s Hospital in San Diego didn’t point out what number of of its workers had stuffed out exemption varieties, however Palomar Well being in north San Diego County mentioned it had acquired solely 22.

Dr. Ghazala Sharieff, company senior vp and chief medical officer at Scripps, mentioned issues round stem cells and vaccine growth had been essentially the most generally cited cause for a spiritual exemption.

“We’re additionally getting our share of individuals saying ‘my physique is my temple,’” Sharieff mentioned.

Brett McClain, Sharp’s chief working officer, mentioned that breakdown sounded acquainted.

“I’d say 90-plus p.c of our non secular exemptions are citing Christian causes across the stem cells,” McClain mentioned. “The remainder are alongside the traces of, ‘I’m in charge of my physique.’”

Malia Wylie, a medical assistant within the orthopedics division of a big San Diego County medical supplier that she declined to call, mentioned she just lately had acquired a spiritual exemption, although getting approval required her to be persistent.

“In my faith, what my conscience tells me is to go forth the way in which I wish to have my physique as a temple,” she mentioned. “I don’t imagine within the fetal cells that they’ve made these vaccines with.

“The elements, I don’t fall consistent with them. The long-term negative effects have but to be decided.”

Scientists, although, have repeatedly indicated that long-term negative effects will not be usually related to vaccines. Most seem inside two months of administration.

As to the stem cell problem, a plethora of scientific sources from throughout the globe say the identical factor: Sure, stem cells derived from elective abortions within the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies have been utilized in “proof of idea” analysis early on within the analysis course of for the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, however they don’t themselves include any stem cell materials.

Cells collected a long time in the past may be cultured, permitting them to proceed rising indefinitely, offering a supply of human cells that’s used all through biomedical analysis. The cells in use at the moment, although, are many generations faraway from those who have been initially obtained after elective abortions.

After contemplating the proof, and learning the vaccines intimately, the Vatican mentioned in a assertion on Dec. 17, 2020, that “all vaccinations acknowledged as clinically secure and efficient can be utilized in good conscience with the sure data that using such vaccines doesn’t represent formal cooperation with the abortion from which the cells utilized in manufacturing of the vaccines derive.”

The Ethics and Spiritual Liberty Fee of the US Southern Baptist Conference made a comparable assertion on Dec. 15, 2020.

Wylie mentioned she was a nondenominational Christian, including that her church, which she declined to call however mentioned she attended often, helps her option to file for and obtain an exemption.

Healthcare suppliers at the moment are put within the place of deciding whether or not to grant such requests.

It’s an adjudication, Sharieff mentioned, that has no clear guidelines. How does an organization whose mission is therapeutic its sufferers confidently choose whose professed non secular reservations are honest and whose will not be?

“We’re going to want some clarification from the state on how you can deal with this case, however we now have not acquired any but,” Sharieff mentioned.

McClain mentioned he was not holding out hope of receiving marching orders from regulators, and that possible signifies that many non secular exemption requests will merely be permitted.

“It is going to possible be us making the choice primarily based on what’s introduced to us,” he mentioned, “and it’s going to be laborious for us to get in the way in which of somebody’s professed non secular perception.”

The state mandate requires these in healthcare who’re granted exemptions to bear coronavirus testing twice per week in the event that they work in medical roles and to put on masks.

Requested whether or not such steering might be forthcoming, the California Division of Public Well being mentioned in an announcement that it had no plans to additional make clear what constituted a legitimate non secular exemption, noting that the state’s order “doesn’t restrict employers from imposing stricter necessities.”

The California Hospital Assn. states in an e-mail that though the non secular exemption requests are possible “taking place throughout the state,” the group doesn’t have “any knowledge or insights on the matter.”

It isn’t in any respect clear that California hospitals can afford to disclaim exemption requests even when they see clear cause to take action. All are at the moment caught up in staffing shortages pushed by pandemic fatigue, a surge in demand for providers and the current migration of the nation’s momentary healthcare workforce to Southern states the place the COVID-19 pandemic has been extra fierce.

Medical exemption requests are additionally a legitimate cause to stay unvaccinated, although there may be extra hard-and-fast science-based causes round which circumstances qualify.

Sharp, McClain mentioned, has acquired 100 medical exemption requests along with the 700 primarily based on non secular beliefs. However campaigns to get workers vaccinated have concurrently been comparatively profitable, pushing the group’s total vaccination price from 80% to 88%.

The really worrisome group, he added, are the roughly 1,300 workers who haven’t but proved that they’re vaccinated and who haven’t filed for any type of exemption. After Sept. 30, he mentioned, the state mandate would require these workers, who work in medical and non-clinical roles, to be placed on unpaid administrative go away.

They’d have a month to get vaccinated earlier than struggling the final word profession consequence.

“Based mostly on the state’s orders, after that, their employment might be terminated,” McClain mentioned. “That might be a tough scenario for certain as a result of we’re already at a tough level with staffing in numerous alternative ways.”