Hospital workers fight for vaccine

With low supply, nurses, doctors “ready to mow each other down for it”

At Newyork-presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, one of the most highly regarded hospitals in New York City, a rumor spread last week that the line for the coronavirus vaccine on the ninth floor was unguarded and anyone could stealthily join and receive the shot.

Under the rules, the most exposed health care employees were supposed to go first, but soon those from lower-risk departments, including a few who spent much of the pandemic working from home, were getting vaccinated.

The lapse, which occurred within 48 hours of the first doses arriving in the city, incited anger among staff members — and an apology from the hospital.

“I am so disappointed and saddened that this happened,” a top executive at Newyork-presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, Dr. Craig Albanese, wrote in an email to staff, which was obtained by The New York Times.

The arrival of the first 40,000 vaccine doses in New York City hospitals last week was greeted with an outpouring of hope from doctors and nurses who had worked through the devastating first wave in March and April. But for now, the vaccine is in very short supply, and some hospitals seem to have stumbled through the rollout.

In interviews for this article, more than half a dozen doctors and nurses at New York area hospitals said they were upset at how the vaccine was being distributed at their institutions.

At Mount Sinai Hospital, some doctors told others that you could talk your way into receiving a vaccine just by getting in line and repeating that you do “COVID -related procedures,” one Mount Sinai doctor, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, recalled.

A doctor at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital said, “Clearly, we’re ready to mow each other down for it.”

Many of the rumors have not been true. Still, they illustrate a growing distrust and “every man for himself ” attitude, another Mount Sinai doctor said.