By Beacon Staff
Des Moines County Supervisor Shane McCampbell has a question for Southeast Iowa Regional Medical Center. He wants to know how many staff will quit or be fired at the end of the month for not following the vaccine mandate.
“If there’s an issue in Des Moines County where we’re going to be understaffed because of people leaving because they are unvaccinated or whatever, we need to know the number. Is it 10? Is it 50?” McCampbell said during the regular board of supervisors meeting Tuesday morning, Feb. 8.
As of Feb. 2, 79 percent of hospital employees (including those in Fort Madison and Mount Pleasant) had been vaccinated according to information provided by the marketing and communications department at SEIRMC.
McCampbell said his question came from correspondence he received from a citizen, which he summarized during the meeting. The citizen said the information should be public knowledge.
“I agree with the citizen,” McCampbell said.
Hospital officials said the number of employees who will be terminated or will leave at the end of the month is not currently available.
Southeast Iowa Regional Medical Center (which includes campuses in West Burlington and Fort Madison, as well as Henry County Health Center in Mount Pleasant) was forced to reinstate the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services vaccine mandate following a Jan. 13 U.S. Supreme Court decision lifting injunctions on the rule in Iowa.
The window for exemption requests for hospital employees is now closed. Healthcare workers in southeast Iowa had until Jan. 27 to show proof of their first COVID-19 vaccine dose or file for an exemption.
COVID-19 in Des Moines County
Christa Poggemiller, director of public health for Des Moines County, reported Des Moines County as having a 23 percent COVID-19 positivity rate for the week Feb. 2-Feb. 8, adding up to 249 new cases for the week.
“I think we’re starting to trend downward with Omicron,” she said.
The state's two COVID-19 tracking websites, coronavirus.iowa.gov and vaccinateiowa.gov websites, will be decommissioned on Feb. 16 by order of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.
COVID-19 data will instead be reported weekly on the Iowa Department of Public Health website, similar to how the flu is reported. Iowa health care providers will also continue to report COVID-19 data required by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“That goes in conjunction with the governor not re-signing the emergency proclamation, which expires on Feb. 16,” Poggemiller said.
Poggemiller said the state is shifting from “response mode” to “recovery mode” regarding COVID-19, and the county plans on doing the same.
“We’re moving in the same direction. We’re kind of looking at what we’re doing as far as the number of days we’re doing the COVID vaccine,” Poggemiller said.
According to Poggemiller, 83.2 percent of Des Moines County residents age of 65 or older have been vaccinated. The total number of vaccinated Des Moines County residents (including all age groups) is 50.3 percent.