Commissioners OK COVID vaccination mandate; it’s jab or job for county health workers
Most workers in the county’s health and mental health departments will have to be vaccinated for COVID-19 or face possible firing, the Sedgwick County Commission decided Wednesday.
The county employees will have until Feb. 28 to become fully vaccinated with the two-dose Moderna or Pfizer vaccines, or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson jab.
The vaccine mandate for public-facing health care workers is required by the federal government and if the county doesn’t comply, it could lose more than $11 million in federal Medicare and Medicaid funding, officials said.
“There’s the danger of taking $11.8 million of federal money, they control us,” Commissioner Jim Howell said.
The mandate is taking effect as the county hits its worst COVID crisis since the pandemic began, fueled by the delta and omicron variants, which are more contagious than classic COVID-19.
On Friday, the positive test rate, a key measure of community spread, peaked at 22.9%, outstripping the previous November peak of 20.3%.
Tuesday’s rate was 21.5%.
Also on Tuesday, the county reported more than 1.300 new cases, bringing the total since the beginning of the pandemic to 97,830.
Wichita-area hospitalizations are also at peak levels with the county reporting 277 COVID beds filled as of Monday. The previous high was 273 in November.
Testing sites are overwhelmed and home-testing kits are sold out in many Wichita-area stores.
The current county vaccination rate was not immediately available but has been hovering around 50% with little upward movement.
Despite those numbers, some commissioners expressed reluctance to approve the mandate for county workers and urged legal staff to look for loopholes.
“I didn’t think I’d ever be voting for a vaccine mandate, which kind of goes against what I believe in, but I believe in the vaccine,” commission Chairman David Dennis said. “I’ve had the booster, I’ve had COVID before any of that, so I think it’s the right thing to do to get the vaccine. But as far as mandating it, I do have a little bit of a problem with that.
“But if we don’t pass this . . . we have the risk of losing about $11 million of support to our community and we can’t afford to do that.”
Dennis and Howell both urged county management to apply the mandate to the absolute minimum number of employees possible and to try to find jobs elsewhere within the organization for workers who refuse to be vaccinated.
“I hate to see us terminate employees that we absolutely need, mental health being our No. 1 priority here in Sedgwick County,” Howell said. “It just breaks my heart thinking we’re going to be terminating a large group of employees, potentially.”
The nationwide mandates issued by the Biden administration in November are aimed at limiting deaths and the health and economic damage of COVID and its variants.
Enforcement had been on hold while legal challenges made their way through the U.S. Supreme Court.
The justices rendered a split decision last Thursday, striking down a broader vaccination mandate on large private businesses, but upholding the rules for medical service providers who accept federal funding.
Those providers include both the Sedgwick County Health Department and the county mental-health agency COMCARE, Assistant County Counselor Kevin Stamper said.
There are 330 positions in the county’s COMCARE mental-health agency and 200 to 210 in the Health Department.
It is unknown how many of those employees are currently vaccinated.
Few of the departments’ employees will be able to dodge the mandate, said Anna Meyerhoff-Cole, deputy director of human resources.
“It’s not just working in the building, it’s providing services within the community,” Cole said. “The only people that would not be included in the mandate is if they are 100% remote and not interacting with the public or other staff.”
Stamper said his interpretation is that the federal mandate doesn’t apply to Emergency Medical Services and county fire district employees who provide public health services.
This story was originally published January 19, 2022 at 1:29 PM.
