Arizona Doctor Calls the Health Care Workers Who Refuse the COVID Vaccine ‘Appalling’
The coronavirus vaccine rollout in the U.S. has been disappointing so far, with only 9 million Americans actually inoculated against the coronavirus despite a goal of over 30 million by the end of January.
Much of that failure has to do with a lack of a federally coordinated response effort, though Americans — including essential health care workers — being skeptical about the vaccine and refusing to be inoculated is adding to the issues.
“It’s really appalling that people in the health care professions are saying and acting that way,” Dr. Murtaza Akhter, an emergency physician at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “I feel like I’ve been lucky, and the people I work with have been very ‘pro-getting vaccinated.’”
According to the Associated Press, some nursing homes and hospitals are seeing as much as 80% of their staff refusing to get the vaccine. At an Illinois veteran home, 90% of its residents have been vaccinated versus only 18% of the staff. And at a county hospital in Alabama, roughly 45% of its workers haven’t agreed to be vaccinated yet despite the immense number of COVID-positive patients flooding the halls.
