U.Va. Health is requiring all employees to receive COVID-19 vaccination by the beginning of November. Anyone who remains unvaccinated as of Nov. 1 will face disciplinary action, which may include employment termination.
By Oct. 18, all U.Va. Health employees must have received either two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, allowing them to be fully vaccinated by the deadline of Nov. 1.
“These vaccines will save lives, prevent unnecessary sickness and help us ensure we have the capacity to provide the best care possible not just for patients with COVID-19 but for all patients,” said K. Craig Kent, chief executive officer of U.Va. Health, in a press release. “It is part of our duty as a leading academic medical center to protect the health of our patients, guests, team members and community.”
Excluding contracted employees, 86 percent of U.Va. Health employees are currently vaccinated. Approximately 14,000 people are employed by the health system, which includes professors, nurses, doctors and more.
The health system previously required that all new hires be vaccinated against COVID-19 — a requirement is had not extended to existing staff until Wednesday. Medical and religious exemptions to the vaccine policy will also be considered.
During a media Q&A session, Wendy Horton, U.Va. Medical Center’s chief executive officer, and Dr. Reid Adams, U.Va Health’s chief medical officer, discussed why the health system made this decision at this moment in time.
“To be able to serve as many patients as possible, we feel that it’s a really important time to make this change,” Horton said. “With the Delta variant and with the information that we know about the effectiveness of vaccines, we feel that it’s a very important step that we can take to really help with this pandemic.”
On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration officially approved the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine for individuals aged 16 years and older. The vaccine remains under emergency use authorization for individuals aged 12 through 15.
The recent authorization was “one more aspect” of several factors that U.Va. Health took into consideration when shaping policies, according to Horton. Multiple times a week, the health system looks at the nationwide pandemic situation, CDC guidance, as well as local vaccination rates to inform their decisions.
The health system has been discussing a vaccination requirement for weeks with the goal of trying to vaccinate those who have been hesitant.
“Hopefully with the announcement on Monday, that will be the key information that some individuals need to feel comfortable getting vaccinated,” Adams said. “It’ll be a series of individual efforts to try to understand and work through the concerns people have. Now that it’s a requirement, it’ll be a conversation that everybody’s going to need to have as part of this discussion.”
The University required COVID-19 vaccinations for all students studying on Grounds this semester and saw 99 percent compliance with the policy as of the start of school. Approximately 96.6 percent of students are fully vaccinated and the remainder have an approved medical or religious exemption.
238 students, who make up around one percent of the population, were disenrolled for not complying with the University’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement, although only 49 of those students had enrolled in classes for the fall.
Fifty-six percent of the population of Virginia is fully vaccinated, whereas in Charlottesville 55.4 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.
There are 63 active cases of COVID-19 in the University community, per the U.Va. COVID Tracker, of which 19 are students and 44 staff.
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