INDIANAPOLIS — Eskenazi Health’s vaccine requirement deadline is today. As of midnight this morning, all Eskenazi Health workers must be vaccinated for COVID or be at risk of losing their jobs.
IU Health workers had until Sept. 1 to get the shot. Those who refused for either suspended or fired. Tiffany Huddleston is one of those workers who is suspended and awaiting official word on when or if she can return to work in the medical-surgical unit at an IU Health hospital.
125 IU Health workers were fired. The organization has around 36,000 employees.
“It’s very stressful and very sad because there are a lot of people that have put a lot of time and effort into their careers,” she told WISH-TV. “I applied for the exemption multiple times for medical and religious reasons and I go denied each time.”
Huddleston understands that the COVID-19 pandemic is bad and doesn’t refute the vaccines’ effectiveness, but says that right now is not the time for her to get vaccinated and said that it should be a personal choice for people to get the shot.
President Biden is mandating that businesses with 100 workers or more require COVID shots for employees, but he is allowing for the option of requiring weekly COVID testing for people who refuse to get the shot.
Huddleston said that IU Health should follow through with that option.
“The hospital that I work at, they have literally in the parking lot right next to me a COVID testing place,” Huddleston said. “So, it’s not like it would be an issue for any of the employees to walk across the street to get tested.”
With IU Health and Eskenazi Health’s deadlines now having come and gone, Ascension workers are still awaiting their deadline of Nov. 12 to get the shot. Community Health Network required all of its workers to be vaccinated by Sept. 15.
