Foreign workers could replace NY’s unvaccinated hospital, nursing home staffers: Hochul

[The Bobster]

Foreign workers could replace NY’s unvaccinated hospital, nursing home staffers: Hochul

The nearly 20 percent of workers at hospitals and nursing homes who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19 will be replaced — potentially by foreigners.

nypost.com

Foreign workers could replace NY’s unvaccinated hospital, nursing home staffers: Hochul​

By
Bernadette Hogan and

Bruce Golding


September 22, 2021 9:12pm
Updated

Gov. Kathy Hochul said unvaccinated hospital and nursing home workers could be replaced by foreign workers. Paul Martinka

​

The nearly 20 percent of workers at hospitals and nursing homes who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19 will be replaced — potentially by foreigners — once the state’s mandate goes into effect next week, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Wednesday.
Hochul told reporters in Rochester that she hoped that all unvaccinated employees would meet Monday’s deadline.
“To those who won’t, we’ll be replacing people. And I have a plan that’s going to be announced very shortly,” she said.
“We’ve identified a whole range of opportunities we have to help supplement them.”
Hochul said state officials were “working closely with various hospital systems to find out where we can get other individuals to come in and supplement places like nursing homes.”
“We’re also reaching out to the Department of State to find out about visas for foreign workers, on a limited basis, to bring more nurses over here,” she said.
The state’s vaccine mandate goes into effect next week.PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
As of Sept. 15, 19 percent of New York’s hospital workers remained unvaccinated, according to state Health Department figures.
For nursing homes, the number was 18 percent as of Wednesday.
After Monday, employers can fire unvaccinated workers who don’t have a “valid medical exemption” for getting the shots.
Employees who claim a religious exemption are also off the hook until at least Oct. 12, due to a temporary restraining order issued by a Utica federal judge after 17 health care workers filed a religious-freedom suit over the mandate.
Gov. Kathy Hochul hopes all unvaccinated employees will meet the mandate deadline.REUTERS/David 'Dee' Delgado/File Photo
The plaintiffs, almost all of them Catholic, oppose the available vaccines on grounds that they all “employ aborted fetus cell lines in their testing, development, or production.”
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has said it’s OK for Catholics “to receive a vaccine that uses abortion-derived cell lines if there are no other available vaccines comparable in safety and efficacy with no connection to abortion.”
Pope Francis has also called getting vaccinated “an act of love.”