The Yakima County Board of Health sent a letter to Gov. Jay Inslee last month asking him to rescind a proclamation that requires state, education and health workers as well as volunteers to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Though the letter is mostly accurate, it tiptoes around certain aspects of COVID-19 and vaccines developed to fight it. Here's a closer look at the four main points made by the letter in an effort to provide a more holistic picture of the points being made:
When Inslee's COVID-19 vaccine mandate went into effect Oct. 18, 2021, roughly 3% of the state's employees, 2% of the state's hospital workers, and less than 1% of the state's school employees either left or were fired due to non-compliance with the mandate.
While these numbers represent over 5,000 lost jobs statewide, they made up about 1.5% of workers affected by the mandate. In extreme cases, certain departments that provide essential services lost a disproportionate number of employees. The Washington State Department of Transportation, for example, lost 402 of its 6,517 employees the day the mandate went into effect. Less than a year later, however, the DOT has already surpassed the number of employees it had prior to the mandate. According to the Washington State Office of Financial Management, as of June 30, the DOT had an employee count of 6,945.
This is also true for other agencies, like the Department of Social and Health Services, which lost 438 of its 15,330 employees. It currently employs 15,526 workers.
In the field of education, about 470 school employees lost their jobs statewide. For school districts in Yakima County, this meant few if any employees left due to the mandate.
The Yakima School District, which employed 2,076 at the time the mandate went into effect, reported less than 0.5% of employees requested leave. Of that 0.5%, district spokesperson Kirsten Fitterer said it was hard to determine the reason for leaving, given there are resignations every year.
Of the 15 school districts in Yakima County, five reported employees had left their jobs. All other employees were either vaccinated or received medical/religious exemptions.
Astria Health and Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital did not provide exact numbers on how many employees left due to the mandate. Bridget Turrell, marketing and communications manager for Memorial, said 100% of the hospital's employees are in compliance with the COVID vaccine mandate, with a small percentage of employees approved for religious or medical exemptions.
As the COVID-19 virus continues to mutate and new, more vaccine-resistant strains are discovered, the COVID-19 vaccine's effectiveness has dropped.
Though current vaccines are not equipped to handle strains like omicron BA.5, Pfizer is weeks away from launching its new bivalent booster, which is specifically designed to protect against the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron subvariants that currently make up the vast majority of COVID-19 cases in Washington.
It is also true that, according to information from the Centers for Disease and Prevention, vaccine-induced immunity drops in effectiveness after a few months. Although current vaccines are not 100% effective in preventing the spread of COVID-19, they have been proved to significantly reduce the risk of severe symptoms and hospitalization.
While some studies published by the CDC found infection-induced immunity brought on by the Delta variant proved to be as or more effective than vaccine-induced immunity, the Delta variant has not been detected in Washington for nearly two months.
Other studies, like the one published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found the likelihood of transmission inside a household dropped by as much as 40-50% when individuals had received at least their first round of vaccinations.
As new variants pop up and new vaccines are designed to counter those variants, the CDC urges people to stay-up-to-date on vaccines.
No studies or other evidence exists to suggest whether or not future COVID-19 variants will be less or more virulent or severe.
The data referenced in this part of the letter is regarding the aforementioned studies that show infection-induced immunity from the delta variant can in some cases be more effective than vaccine-induced immunity. This is not true for other past variants or the current, most common omicron subvariants.
While oral antivirals like Paxlovid and Lagevrio exist and are more commonly available now than they were early in the pandemic, they are not over-the-counter medicines. In some cases, the U.S Food and Drug Administration allows pharmacists to prescribe Paxlovid, as long as the patient can provide the appropriate medical records or if they can put the pharmacist in contact with their health care provider.
In order to be prescribed Paxlovid by a health care professional, individuals must be considered to be at high risk of getting serious symptoms and they must have already tested positive for COVID-19 five days or less before getting the prescription.
Other treatment methods like monoclonal antibodies also require an individual to already have been infected with COVID-19 within seven days of a referral from a health care professional. They must also be at high risk for severe COVID-19 symptoms.
