Shot refusals leave hospital in New York short of staff

A hospital in upstate New York says it will stop delivering babies in less than two weeks after several workers quit rather than get vaccinated against COVID-19.

“We are unable to safely staff the service after Sept. 24th,” Lewis County General Hospital CEO Gerald Cayer said last week.

New York state is requiring health care workers to be vaccinated by Sept. 27. The hospital, 300 miles north of New York City, was struggling to remain adequately staffed even before the mandate, he said.

He said he will work with the state Department of Health to try and ensure the unit won’t permanently close.

Hutchinson: Vaccine mandate ‘disrupts and divides the nation’

The nation can end the coronavirus pandemic only by expanding vaccination efforts through mandates and access, while increasing testing capacity and shoring up overburdened health care systems, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said Sunday. Murthy, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said President Joe Biden and every American must use “every lever we have” in order to fight this pandemic.

“In the face of delta, we’ve got to ... bring everything to bear at this moment,” Murthy said.

Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, whose state ranks in the bottom 10 for vaccination percentage, also appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and said he appreciated the surgeon general’s comments. But he said vaccination requirements in schools historically have come at the state level, not the national level.

“This is an unprecedented assumption of federal mandate authority that really disrupts and divides the country,” he said.

2 Iowa hospitals join others in US limiting elective procedures

Hospitals in Iowa are among the latest to limit elective procedures to deal with COVID-19. UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s Hospital and Mercy Medical Center told The Cedar Rapids Gazette they are preserving capacity.

Hospitals in Portland, Oregon, paused nonessential surgeries for two weeks late last month as COVID-19 cases pushed hospitals close to capacity. Some Ohio hospitals also paused surgeries that would require overnight stays. At the end of August, Indiana University Health officials also announced they would be suspending half of the inpatient elective surgeries.

‘Mask it or casket:’ Georgia college faculty to begin protests

At least 16 Georgia colleges across 19 campuses are planning week-long demonstrations in hopes of pressuring administrators to institute mask and/ or vaccine mandates. Organizers are adamant that the protest is not a work stoppage; strikes are illegal in Georgia, and participants would be fired.

Protests and demonstrations are popping up across the country, particularly in the South, where COVID-19 is raging and hospital ICUs are close to capacity. Faculty at the University of Tennessee protested in Knoxville last week, while University of South Carolina faculty launched a social media campaign on Sept. 7.

- Lindsay Schnell

Also in the news:

h Florida accounted for 1 of every 26 deaths reported in the world in the week ending Friday, Johns Hopkins University data shows. Florida had 2,448 deaths, 21.4% of the 11,413 U.S. deaths and 3.9% of the 62,559 global deaths.

h The U.S. has recorded more than 40.8 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 658,900 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. More than 177.8 million Americans – 53.6% – have been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.