Many S.F. workers skipping vaccines
At least 2,700 risk losing city jobs amid hesitancy
At least 2,700 San Francisco city employees have not been vaccinated against the coronavirus — including some frontline workers — and could eventually lose their jobs if they continue to refuse the shots, according to city data exclusively obtained by The Chronicle.
The overwhelming majority of San Francisco’s 36,000person workforce is vaccinated against the coronavirus. But the San Francisco
Police Department, Municipal Transportation Agency and Department of Public
Health each had hundreds of unvaccinated employees as of Wednesday, according to data collected by the Department of Human Resources.
Frontline city employees were among the first groups eligible for the vaccine. The data provided to The Chronicle does not reflect how many employees plan to claim valid religious or medical exemptions.
San Francisco was the first major U.S. city to
announce it would require all its employees to get vaccinated once the Food and Drug Administration fully approves the shots, possibly as soon as early September. The vaccines are now under emergency use authorization. Unless employees claim a legitimate religious or medical exemption, they could risk losing their jobs.
All 36,110 employees were originally asked to submit their vaccination status to human resources by Friday, but about 8,500 employees either did not respond or logged their information incorrectly. The department has given employees a grace period until Aug. 12.
The unvaccinated represent a fraction of the city’s workforce. Still, the numbers raise concerns that some employees interacting with the public — including police officers, bus drivers and medical professionals — are unprotected against the virus and putting others at risk.
“We have set a clear policy for our workforce, and we need people to follow it if they want to work for the city and county of San Francisco,” said Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for Mayor London Breed, who has at least four unvaccinated employees in her 127person office.
Cretan said the mayor’s office is going to continue doing outreach to those who are unvaccinated and don’t have a valid exemption, and “do everything we can to make sure they are comfortable getting the vaccine.”
“The vaccine is safe, it’s effective, and it will help us protect the health of our workers and the public,” he said.
About 80% of San Francisco’s eligible population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. City officials have been scrambling to vaccinate the rest, especially as the highly contagious delta variant drives a surge in cases and hospitalizations, mostly among the unvaccinated.
Mawuli Tugbenyoh, chief of policy for the Department of Human Resources, said the city implemented this policy because “the health and safety of our employees and the public is our preeminent concern.” Unlike New York, which has a similar mandate for city workers, San Francisco’s employees cannot substitute weekly testing in place of getting vaccinated.
According to the data, nearly 70% of the city’s workforce said it has received at least one shot — a number that experts say is likely higher than most other U.S. cities. Another 9% of employees incorrectly recorded their information, but Tugbenyoh says they are most likely vaccinated.
Several union leaders representing nurses, bus drivers, firefighters and sheriff ’s deputies told The Chronicle some workers have medical or religious reasons for not getting vaccinated or mistrust a health care system historically biased against people of color. Many also don’t want an employer meddling in a personal decision.
“Our concern is when is it going to stop?” said Roger Marenco, president of Transport Workers Union Local 250A, the union representing Muni operators.
Marenco represents 2,200 employees, mostly bus drivers, who work for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. At least 304 employees, or 5.2% of the agency’s workforce, are unvaccinated. As of Wednesday, there were still about 2,600 employees in the agency who incorrectly input information or have not responded, including Marenco, who did not provide his status to the city or The Chronicle.
The San Francisco Police Department has one of the highest shares of unvaccinated employees: 17% of the workforce, or at least 480 people. About 530 employees still needed to report or correct their vaccination status.
Matt Dorsey, a spokesman for the Police Department, said the number of unvaccinated employees is “larger than we’d hoped.” He added that the department will “continue educating our members about city policy and other factors that may help mitigate vaccine hesitancy.”
While the city has not officially decided what it would do with unvaccinated employees, Tugbenyoh said a nondisciplinary separation is possible. In a worstcase scenario, the situation could lead to shortstaffing in departments such as police and the Municipal Transportation Agency that already say they’re strapped for resources.
The concept of mandated vaccines is not new: some San Francisco workers are already mandated to get certain shots, like for measles and mumps.
Still, even in the Department of Public Health — which is leading the city’s vaccination effort and pandemic response — about 200 employees are unvaccinated.
Department of Public Health nurse Mayela Gutknecht is one of them.
She said she still has antibodies from a coronavirus infection in November, according to her last blood draw three weeks ago. She said she wants to see how long her natural immunity lasts, even though experts have said that a coronavirus infection confers weaker immunity than the vaccines and that even those who’ve had the virus should get shots.
She said when her immunity does wane, she would consider getting a vaccine, but said she would look at case rates to gauge the need. But even then, she still has “lots of questions about the shots,” she said.
“I would rather mask up at work and social distance and support families in various ways and reduce the risk of being exposed to it or exposing families than get shots every year,” she said.
According to the city’s health order, no one — from nurses to a UPS delivery person — will be able to go into a highrisk setting, like a skilled nursing facility or homeless shelter, without being vaccinated or having an exemption by October.
Dr. Kirsten BibbinsDomingo, chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF and a practicing physician at San Francisco General, said it’s critical for frontline city employees such as police officers and health care workers to get vaccinated — not only to protect themselves, but the vulnerable people they often interact with.
But Ken Lomba, the head of the San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association, said that if the vaccines are mandated, some workers will retire or leave their jobs. There are at least 163 unvaccinated employees in that department, or 16% of the workforce. Another 160 either did not report or reported incorrectly.
Meanwhile, at least 169 employees in the Fire Department, or about 10% of the workforce, are unvaccinated. There are 371 people left to report or correct their status.
San Francisco is not alone in lagging vaccination rates, particularly among its law enforcement agencies. Some other cities, like Los Angeles and New York City, have much lower numbers, with about half their police forces refusing the shots.
Regardless, BibbinsDomingo said San Francisco’s relatively low rate of unvaccinated public employees is too high as the city battles the “gamechanger” delta variant.
“Even if you’re not personally concerned, there’s a risk to spread to others when you interact in situations that are not within your control,” she said. “We have to, as people working in health and safety, do everything we can to protect the public.”