The statement and accompanying guidelines — signed by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and five other medical groups — come amid a raging debate about health care, as some organizations impose new vaccine requirements and as infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci suggested last weekend that “there should be more mandates” at the local level to curb virus spread.
But federal officials have balked at instituting national requirements on health-care workers, and many health-care organizations have said they do not plan to require their staff members to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Some nurses and other health-care personnel have quit or sued organizations that imposed coronavirus vaccine mandates, claiming that the measures are unethical or illegal, although a federal judge rejected one such lawsuit last month.
The guidelines announced Tuesday — which include recommendations for engaging wary employees, navigating regulations and how to enforce a mandatory coronavirus vaccination policy — were crafted by a team of nearly 30 experts during the past two months.
“We think [it] will provide support for organizations that were thinking about making the vaccine a condition of employment for their health-care workers,” said Hilary M. Babcock, an infectious-disease expert at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a past president of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, who co-wrote the guidelines. ...
