US healthworkers face Covid vaccination uncertainty
12 January
Linda Nazareth, senior fellow for economics and population change at the Macdonald Laurier Institute, shared an article on the challenges and uncertainties around self-employed workers getting vaccinated in the US.
For instance, janitors, nurses, midwives, and others who are self-employed in jobs that expose them to the SARs-CoV-2 infection, are looking for answers as to when they will be vaccinated, the article noted.
Most of these workers remain worried about the risk of exposure, as they have been interacting with numerous people on a daily basis.
The disparities are so wide that even state-licenced midwives have not received the Covid-19 vaccine, despite frontline workers and staff being prioritised for inoculations before all other citizens.
The problem arises from the fact that these midwives are independent practitioners and are therefore neglected from the first supplies of the vaccines being prioritised for staff in hospitals and healthcare systems.
According to a study by UC Berkeley researchers, independent contractors and self-employed workers constituted 12% of California’s entire workforce.
Nurses, physical therapists, and physicians who aren’t directly associated with hospitals, have posted questions online.