Alabama hospital reverses vaccine mandate

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Alabama hospital reverses vaccine mandate, still offers $400 for employees who get jabbed

Just one month after UAB officials initially demanded on August 17 that
‘employees and people working in its hospitals and clinics must be vaccinated against COVID-19,’ the hospital backed down.

Sep 23, 2021
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (LifeSiteNews) — Hospital employees of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Health System will no longer be required to take a COVID-19 shot to keep their jobs, hospital officials announced Saturday.

Just one month after UAB officials initially demanded on August 17 that “employees and people working in its hospitals and clinics must be vaccinated against COVID-19,” the hospital backed down, ending the strict requirement after a legal challenge was raised against the ordinance from the Alabama Center for Law and Liberty (ACLL), FOX23 reported.

Sarah Nafziger, Vice President of Clinical Support Services at UAB, originally stated that “[u]nvaccinated health care workers” put vulnerable patients at greater risk, “given that their jobs require close interaction with them and others who are immunocompromised.”

At the time, Nafziger stated that “UAB Medicine’s Medical Executive Committee has determined the appropriate standard of care requires vaccination,” adding her opinion that “it is the best way to provide a safe environment” to care for their patients, “as they are uniquely susceptible to COVID-19.”

Data from Public Health England showed that about two-thirds of those who have died with the COVID-19 Delta variant in England and Wales before August 6 had both doses of the COVID jabs. The “fully vaccinated” suffered the highest mortality rate despite most Britons (around 58.5 percent) having already been double jabbed by the same date, raising questions about the effectiveness of the shots.

As things stand, Alabama has issued a state-wide ban on enforcing COVID-19 “vaccine or immunization passports … or any other standardized documentation for the purpose of certifying the immunization status of an individual.”

Since the “UAB Hospital is a state-run hospital,” the ACLL noted in a letter to UAB administrators, “UAB Hospital may not require its employees to disclose whether they have been vaccinated or not. Likewise, the Alabama Attorney General has examined the law and concluded that ‘no government, school, or business in Alabama may demand that a constituent, or customer, respectively, be vaccinated for COVID-19 or show proof of his or her vaccination for COVID-19.’”

Don Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association, confirmed that UAB was one of only a handful of hospitals in the state to enforce a vaccine mandate, and that, in any case, uptake of the jabs has been high, with “between 50% and 80%” of hospital staff taking the shot, FOX23 wrote.

UAB had been offering an incentive program beside the mandate, gifting $400 to any staff member who elected to take the experimental COVID jab, which the hospital announced they would continue to offer in a statement retracting the shot mandate.

The retraction follows President Joe Biden’s announcement that “all employers with 100 or more employees … ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.” With over 18,000 employees working within the expansive UAB Health System network, the hospital will be subject to the new federal imposition.

“The UAB Health System’s policy requiring COVID vaccines for its workers was implemented in August prior to the announcement of forthcoming federal directives,” UAB spokesperson Tyler Greer said, explaining that “President Biden issued an executive order Sept. 9 indicating that federal rules and regulations will be issued in the coming weeks that will require COVID vaccines for workers at health care facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid dollars.

LifeSiteNews contacted UAB for confirmation of plans to reintroduce a vaccine mandate, and whether there will be exemptions based on medical, religious, or conscience grounds, but did not receive a reply in time for publication.

Meanwhile, a subsidiary of the hospital system, UAB Center West in Bessemer, just outside Birmingham, Alabama, has made headlines after a patient died following refusal from hospital staff to treat a COVID-stricken patient with ivermectin.

Todd Abbott, a 43-year-old husband and father, died September 17 at UAB Center West after several appeals by Abbott’s wife that he be treated for his declining condition with ivermectin, an antiviral drug known to be effective at mitigating the effects of the novel coronavirus.

The Truth for Health Foundation recently ran its fourth Stop the Shot conference, focusing on medical freedom and the tyranny of hospitals refusing to treat COVID-positive patients with life-saving medications, exposing widespread neglect in American hospitals leading to numerous deaths.