With a limited supply of COVID-19 vaccines potentially arriving in Chicago this month, many area hospitals are finalizing plans for which workers will get them first and how they’ll be stored and distributed.
Hospitals will prioritize vaccines for front line workers who deal directly with patients. And at least a handful of Chicago-area hospital systems said Wednesday the vaccine won’t be mandatory for employees, for now — even though many require employees to get flu shots each year.
Unlike the flu shot, if a COVID-19 vaccine is approved, it will be approved under an emergency use authorization, which is when the FDA allows products that have not gone through the regular approval process to be used in emergencies.
“We don’t really feel like we can make it mandatory while it’s under EUA (emergency use authorization),” said Dr. Michael Kelleher, who leads Amita Health’s COVID-19 vaccine steering committee. “Once it’s approved by the FDA, we will probably make it mandatory, but I think we need to wait and see what happens with that.”
In an email sent to faculty, staff and students Wednesday, University of Chicago Medicine leaders said the vaccine will be optional, although they encouraged employees to consider it.
Advocate Aurora Health and Rush University Medical Center don’t initially plan to require employees to get COVID-19 vaccines.
“We didn’t think this was the year to mandate vaccination for everyone,” said Dr. John Segreti, medical director of infection prevention and control for Rush. “We strongly encourage everyone to get it.”
Amita Health, which has 19 hospitals in Illinois, plans to give the first vaccines to workers in emergency departments, intensive care units and those who care for COVID-19 patients — in line with guidance from the Chicago Department of Public Health and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Those front line workers could ultimately include both medical and nonmedical employees, such as custodians and those who deliver food to patients, Kelleher said.
If Amita does not get enough vaccines, at first, to vaccinate all those people, those who participate in procedures that can generate aerosols will be first in line, he said.
“That would be the absolute No. 1 priority because those are the people at greatest risk of contracting COVID in the health care setting,” Kelleher said.
Advocate, which has 10 hospitals in Illinois, plans to prioritize nurses and respiratory therapists who work in high-risk areas such as ICUs, emergency departments and COVID-19 units, especially those who are at the highest risk of becoming ill because of their ages or chronic medical conditions, said Dr. Robert Citronberg, executive medical director of infectious disease and prevention.
Citronberg said the system is putting nurses at the front of the line because they spend so much time with patients, and Advocate’s biggest staffing challenge during the pandemic has been with nurses.
He said, however, he anticipates that it won’t be long before many more health workers can get the vaccines.
“We’re triaging,” Citronberg said of the current plan. “Probably within three months or so, every team member who wants a vaccine will get one.”
NorthShore University HealthSystem plans to prioritize ICU and emergency department workers who participate in aerosolizing procedures, said Dr. Kamaljit Singh, NorthShore director of infectious disease and microbiology research. Next on the list will be people who work at the system’s Glenbrook Hospital in Glenview, which the system has converted into a COVID-19-only hospital, and those who work in emergency departments across NorthShore’s other four hospitals, he said.
Sinai Chicago, which runs Mt. Sinai and Holy Cross hospitals, will focus first on employees who are at high risk of getting and transmitting COVID-19 based on their own health histories, exposure and jobs, spokesman Dan Regan said in an email.
Advocate and Amita have ordered additional ultracold freezers to store a potential vaccine made by Pfizer, which requires a storage temperature of negative 70 degrees Celsius. NorthShore ordered more ultracold freezers several months ago as backups to their current freezers, Singh said. University of Chicago Medicine said in an email to faculty, staff and students Wednesday that ultracold storage space would be available for the vaccine.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is meeting Dec. 10 to consider emergency use authorization of the Pfizer vaccine, and is set to meet again a week later to consider a second vaccine made by Moderna. Both have been shown in trials to be more than 90% effective.
Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said Tuesday that the first distribution in Chicago is expected to go to health care workers at hospitals, potentially by the third week of December. Initially, the city expects to get enough vaccines for 20,000 to 25,000 people, and the state of Illinois may initially get enough for another 109,00 people, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Wednesday.
Both the city and state will follow federal guidelines on vaccine distribution. An advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted Tuesday to recommend health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities get COVID-19 vaccines first.
Dan Petrella contributed to this report.
