American hospital employees sneak into the vaccine queue

Hospital employees who weren’t prioritized in the vaccine line still got a shot. To the great frustration of colleagues and the management of the hospital in New York.

According to The New York Times, there was a great uproar when hospital employees had unjustifiably secured some of the first doses of coronary vaccine in the city of millions.

The first vaccine was distributed in New York last week. The city has had a skyrocketing death toll as a result of the pandemic. Vaccine is currently a rare commodity.

Front-line health personnel should be vaccinated first. But then there were some who sneaked into the queue.

“I am disappointed and I am sorry this happened.” This was written by Dr. Craig Albanese in the administration of the renowned New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in an email to his staff.

No one checked the tail

Hospital staff had lined up on the ninth floor of the hospital to receive the first doses of the coronary vaccine. But nobody controlled the queue. The news quickly spread through the corridors of the hospital.

Many were cut to receive the long-awaited stab in the arm, even if they weren’t among the first. That was certainly not right.

According to the regulation, the most vulnerable health workers were those who had to be vaccinated first. It soon became clear that employees in departments with a low risk of infection were also vaccinated. Someone from the central office also lined up at the hospital to get vaccinated.

Dr. Albanese apologized for the inconvenience. At the same time, he criticized the vaccination team for not following established lists of who should get vaccinated, but instead letting others go.

– We must prioritize the teams with the highest risk, he wrote.

It all happened in 48 hours when the first doses of vaccine arrived in New York. This generated great outrage among the hospital staff and prompted an apology from the hospital management.

The vaccine is highly anticipated and gives hope to the doctors and nurses who have been on alert since the start of the pandemic outbreak in March and April. But vaccines are a rare commodity.

And now it seems that some hospitals have stumbled in the initial phase of vaccination. Internally among healthcare professionals, there should now be both discomfort and suspicion, according to The New York Times.

Many wonder: really deserving the colleague to get vaccinated before me?

Suspicious of each other for sneaking

The newspaper has interviewed several doctors and nurses in hospitals in New York. Many people are frustrated with the way vaccines have been distributed in the hospitals where they work.

But they don’t want to be named. This is because some hospitals have shown their willingness to punish or fire employees if they speak to the media during the pandemic.

Rumors are also circulating on social media about doctors trying to sneak in front of the vaccine queue, even though they don’t work with covid patients.

– I think it’s sad that people start to confront each other, says one of the doctors at Morgan Stanley Hospital.

Healthcare workers and nursing home residents first

Healthcare professionals and nursing home patients will be vaccinated in Phase 1 of the New York State Immunization Plan. Health institutions can decide for themselves who receives the vaccine in this first phase.

Two million people are part of this group in New York. In phase 2, people with so-called major professions will be vaccinated. It probably won’t be until January.

Only this summer will the vaccines be distributed to the entire American population. The authorities have guaranteed that the vaccine will be free for all. It is not common in the United States.

According to the BBC, the country’s 21 million healthcare workers and around 3 million elderly people in nursing homes take priority and are now being continuously vaccinated.

Fear of vaccine-related crime

Now lots and lots of vaccines are being rolled out in various countries. In the United States and the United Kingdom, vaccination is in full swing.

In Norway, the first residents of a nursing home can get vaccinated during Christmas. What nursing homes get first is shrouded in secrecy.

Safety considerations are now being made around the world when the precious vaccine drops are distributed. The fear is that vaccination kits will be stolen.

Europol is concerned that organized criminal groups want to crack down on what Interpol describes as “liquid gold”.

Interpol has warned against criminal activity related to the covid-19 vaccine.