Updated at 4:31 p.m.
The University of Vermont Health Network announced Friday that, effective Oct. 1, it will require its 15,000 employees to be vaccinated for Covid-19 or face weekly testing. A spokesperson for the institution, Neal Goswami, said some staffers would be granted religious and medical exemptions.
The network, which operates six hospitals in Vermont and upstate New York, becomes the largest employer in the region to issue such a mandate. Other health care providers, such as New Hampshire-based Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health, set similar requirements for employees in recent days, but several Vermont hospitals — including those run by UVM Health Network — held off on doing so, as VTDigger reported Thursday.
In a written statement, UVM Health Network president and CEO John Brumsted said the decision squared with the organization’s reliance on data, research and science to keep patients safe.
“The recent rise of COVID-19 cases in our region and across the country due to the highly contagious delta variant has made one thing crystal clear: vaccination is how we control the spread and hopefully end this pandemic,” Brumsted wrote. “As a health care provider, our consistent message through the pandemic has been to get vaccinated to protect yourself and others, and it is imperative that we do the right thing to protect our patients, our communities and our employees.”
The health network’s announcement came as the Delta variant continued to spread throughout the region, leading to another surge of Covid-19 cases. The Vermont Department of Health reported 88 new cases Friday, including 44 in Chittenden County.
Other major institutions in the area have been stepping up their responses to Covid-19 in recent days. Earlier this week, Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger said he was considering requiring city employees to be vaccinated. A number of Vermont and New Hampshire colleges, including the University of Vermont and Dartmouth College, have announced indoor mask mandates.
A spokesperson for Gov. Phil Scott told VTDigger Thursday that the governor “supports hospitals, long-term care facilities and other health care providers requiring their employees to be vaccinated, or mandated masking and weekly testing for the unvaccinated.”
According to the spokesperson, Jason Maulucci, Scott is “currently exploring the possibility of state action on vaccine mandates, including in certain state-run facilities, but no decisions have been made yet.”
In a statement to VTDigger earlier this week, the UVM Health Network said that it was “actively moving toward the goal of” having all its employees vaccinated but had not yet decided whether to mandate vaccines.
Employee vaccination rates vary at each of the facilities operated by the health network, according to figures provided by spokesperson Neal Goswami. At its flagship hospital, the University of Vermont Medical Center, at least 84% of employees are vaccinated, including 90% of its patient-facing staff, Goswami said, though he cautioned that the numbers were somewhat out of date.
At least 84% of employees at Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin are vaccinated as are 90% at Porter Medical Center in Middlebury, Goswami said.
Asked why the health network was waiting until October to mandate vaccines, Goswami said that doing so would provide employees the opportunity to comply — and would provide the network time to implement a medical and religious exemption system.
“All of this will take some time,” he said.
