MaineHealth workers will have to receive COVID-19 vaccine by Oct. 1

File photo Maine Medical Center, the 637-bed Portland hospital of the MaineHealth system, is one of the sites where employees must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by October.

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By William Hall

MaineHealth, the state’s largest health care system, has joined the second-largest in requiring workers to receive COVID-19 vaccinations.

On Tuesday, MaineHealth said inoculation against the deadly disease will be a mandatory condition of employment for all staff, with "very few exceptions," as of Oct. 1. The announcement came a day after Northern Light Health said its employees must be vaccinated no later than six weeks after the medications receive full, currently pending federal approval.

MaineHealth employs over 23,000 people in Maine and New Hampshire, while Northern Light Health has 12,000 employees in Maine.

Both health care systems are instructing employees to roll up their sleeves in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19, which has been rebounding in Maine and nationwide via the delta variant of the coronavirus.

Broad vaccination can prevent and minimize the impact of COVID-19, and is critical to protecting people whose immune systems are compromised, as well as unvaccinated children and adults. For that reason, health care providers are requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19, along with influenza, pertussis and chickenpox, MaineHealth said in a news release Tuesday.

“The vaccines are very effective, and are preventing hospitalizations and health complications with COVID-19. In addition, the vaccines are proven safe — we have a full year of data from the clinical trials and almost 200 million Americans have received a COVID-19 vaccination,” said Dr. Dora-Anne Mills, chief health improvement officer of MaineHealth.

“To be consistent with our values and to protect our colleagues, families, patients and communities, we believe it is paramount that all care team members be vaccinated.”

MaineHealth may exempt workers from the requirement if they have legitimate medical and religious reasons for not being vaccinated, according to the news release.

As of late July, 83.8% of all MaineHealth employees were fully vaccinated, the release said. But employee vaccination rates vary widely from site to site. Among MaineHealth’s 12 hospitals, the rates range from 71.1% at Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington to 92% at the HealthSouth unit of Maine Medical Center in Portland, according to the most recent state data.

The call for vaccination among health care workers is also strong across the border in New Hampshire. Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health, the state's largest health care provider, on Tuesday announced that all of its 13,000 workers must receive a vaccine by Sept. 30. The hospital associations in both New Hampshire and Maine have expressed support for such requirements.

In addition to health care organizations, a growing number of other employers are requiring workers to get vaccinated. Among them, Tyson Foods Inc. (NYSE: TSN) on Tuesday said it will require all U.S. office employees to be inoculated by Oct. 1 and other workers to receive a vaccine by Nov. 1.

Tyson, based in Springdale, Ark., has 141,000 employees. They include over 400 in Portland, at the former Barber Foods chicken processing plant, which reported an outbreak of COVID-19 in May 2020.

As of Tuesday, 817,929 Mainers, or 60.85% of the state's population, had been fully vaccinated, according to state data. A total of 136 new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed Tuesday, bringing the number of cases in the pandemic so far to nearly 71,000. More than 2,100 people have been hospitalized in Maine because of the disease, and 900 have died of it.

The delta variant now accounts for 93.4% of all coronavirus circulating in the U.S., the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.