Vax rate high among NJ healthcare workers

New Jersey, it appears, will not have to mobilize the National Guard to staff hospitals and health care facilities. Most healthcare workers have abided by Governor Phil Murphy's mandate to get vaccinated against COVID or get fired.

NorthJersey.com is reporting compliance with the vaccine mandate is better than 95% at most hospitals and other medical facilities and is still increasing. Many workers who opted for testing rather than vaccination, are now deciding to get the jab.

That's a substantially higher vaccination rate than in California, where National Guard medics are staffing some rural hospitals where staff have quit or been fired for refusing to get vaccinated. Healthcare workers rallied against the vaccine last week. One of the rally organizers, Nurse Deborah Burns, told the crowd, "I will not violate my body by putting an experimental death dart with undisclosed ingredients in it!"

New York state had also feared having to mobilize National Guard medics to help with an exodus of healthcare workers, but that seems to have been averted, for now.

New Jersey already had one of the highest vaccination rates in the nation, so it seems to follow that rates would be high among healthcare workers. But that does not mean there isn't a shortage.

There was already a nursing shortage in the Garden State before the pandemic. The toll of working 18 hour shifts in the midst of a pandemic has been great. Vaccine mandate or not, many nurses and other healthcare workers are just burned out, and have left the profession.