FACT BRIEF

Are substantial numbers of US health care workers still unvaccinated against COVID-19?

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

By Austin Tannenbaum

Copy link

Copy featured image

YES

While the vaccination rate among health care workers continues to increase, a significant share remains unvaccinated.

The Covid States Project, a collaborative effort by researchers from Northeastern, Harvard, Northwestern, and Rutgers, recently surveyed more than 20,000 individuals from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. They found that as of July, 27% of health care workers had not been vaccinated.

Researchers noted that 15% of health care workers reported being vaccine resistant and warned that “absent mandates, most of the currently unvaccinated health care workers will remain unvaccinated, potentially fueling outbreaks in health care facilities.”

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission stated in May that anti-discrimination laws do not prevent employers from requiring their employees to be vaccinated. Since then, many workplaces, including health care facilities, have implemented vaccine mandates; some have fired workers for refusing.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

Northeastern University Healthcare workers are getting vaccinated, but more still need convincing, US survey finds

US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission What you should know about COVID-19 and the ADA, the Rehabilitation Act, and other EEO Laws

Society for Human Resource Management Employers react to workers who refuse vaccination as COVID-19 cases rise

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

Gigafact

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

FACT BRIEF BY

Latest fact briefs

About fact briefs published on Gigafact

Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact —a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all fact briefs here.