Jabless & jobless

Northwell Health fires two dozen unvaxxed

New York’s largest hospital system, Northwell Health, began sacking staffers who refused to get COVID-19 vaccines on Monday as Gov. Hochul stood firm on her deadline for health-worker inoculations.

“I’ve made it loud and clear that I’m not going to change my position,” Hochul said Monday morning. “I’m charged with protecting the health of all New Yorkers.”

Northwell — which in New York City alone operates or is affiliated with Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, Manhattan Eye, Ear &

Throat, Forest Hills Hospital in Queens, Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn and Staten Island University Hospital — confirmed that it had fired roughly two dozen managers Monday after they repeatedly failed to get their shots.

“A few hundred unvaccinated leaders were contacted last week to take urgent action in regards to

getting the shot,” said a Northwell spokesman.

“About two dozen of them who were still not vaccinated were exited from the system.”

The spokesman said that the staffers were the exception and not the rule as the vaccination rate among the system’s 76,000-strong workforce is “already nearly 100 percent.”

“Northwell wants to reassure the public that during this time there will be no impact to the quality of patient care at any of our facilities,” he said.

Hochul’s administration has OK’d allowing retired doctors and nurses to go back into practice and relaxed some requirements for out-of-state doctors and nurses, and is even contemplating calling up the National Guard to help out.

“We’re taking all the steps preemptively in anticipation of what I call a ‘preventable staffing shortage,’ ” Hochul said. “Still preventable. Enough hours in a day. Come on down [to get your shots].”

Hochul’s order required hospital and nursing home staffers to get their first dose before midnight.

The Big Apple’s sprawling publichospital system revealed Monday that nearly 90 percent of its staff has been vaccinated.

That’s a dramatic uptick in recent weeks since Mayor de Blasio first ordered workers to get inoculated or face weekly testing, a mandate later subsumed by Hochul’s requirement that all staff get shots.

But the system’s boss, Dr. Mitch Katz, said that as of Monday morning, roughly 5,000 of its 43,000 workers still needed to get their jabs — mostly among NYC Health + Hospitals’ support staff.

More than 95 percent of the system’s doctors and nurses have been vaccinated so far, Katz said, adding that unvaccinated workers had a chance to get their first shot when they arrived Monday — or be sent home without pay.

More than 84 percent of hospital staffers statewide had gotten at

least their first shot as of Sept. 22.