Mounting Data May Persuade Hesitant Staff to Receive the COVID-19 Vaccine

Perhaps counterintuitively, there have been widespread reports of healthcare workers refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, putting themselves, those around them, and your business at risk. Their choice is likely founded on the same baseless fears that keep too many members of the public away—mainly, that the speed at which the vaccines were studied and approved means they’re unproven or could be dangerous. Incidence of serious side effects has not proven to be any higher than it is for many other vaccines, however, and a new research letter published in The New England Journal of Medicine presents hard data illustrating the  effectiveness of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines—after both the first and second doses—among clinicians. New cases of COVID-19 occurred in 2.5% of those tested a week after their first shot, 1.2% in the second week, and 0.7 in the third week. There were positive tests in just 0.4% of those tested a week after the second dose; by the second week after the second dose the figure was down to 0.2%.