By Rachel Sawicki

NEWARK — At least 350 people gathered outside the west entrance of ChristianaCare’s Christiana Hospital Saturday to protest a recent vaccine mandate for employees with the health care provider.

Tori Malin is a former employee at ChristianaCare and organized the rally online. She said most people there, including herself, are not anti-vaccination, but rather they are anti-mandate.

“Health care workers should be against any mandate or forced compliance,” she said. “We go day in and day out teaching our patients about informed consent and the mandate really goes against that.”

A statement released Saturday morning from ChristianaCare said it did not make the decision to mandate the vaccine lightly, but the decision is based on the science and facts about the vaccine.

“This important, life-saving safety standard supports our continued ability to serve our neighbors as respectful, expert, caring partners in their health,” the statement said.

Ms. Malin referenced the Nuremberg Code, which serves as a blueprint for today’s principles that ensure the rights of subjects in medical research, and requires subjects are “told the risks and the benefits, and you have the right to choose, or decline,” Ms. Malin said. She also said that a vaccine that isn’t Food and Drug Administration-approved shouldn’t be mandated.

ChristianaCare attributes its policy to the spread of new variants.

“The imminent danger posed by the highly transmissible delta variant of COVID has tipped the scales in our effort to balance the right to personal freedom with the right to having a safe workplace,” the healthcare provider said in the statement.

Several protesters claimed the vaccine is experimental and said they don’t trust it because it is not yet approved by the FDA. But the release from ChristianaCare said more is known about the safety of the vaccines than has ever been known about a vaccine so soon after it has become available.

“The COVID-19 vaccines are safe and approved,” the release said. “They are not experimental. Hundreds of millions of doses have been given under the most intense scrutiny in medical history.”

Miranda Stewart of Wilmington works in the medical field. She said there isn’t enough clarity about the short- and long-term effects.

“People are coming in after their second dose of the shot with symptoms … not necessarily COVID symptoms, like tingling in their legs,” Ms. Stewart said.

The CDC warns patients that after a dose of one of the COVID-19 vaccines, side effects of the virus such as headache, muscle pain, chills, fever and nausea may persist for a few days. Tingling and numbness are not symptoms of COVID-19, but the CDC also says that tingling can happen after getting any vaccine. Although uncommon, these events are not unexpected, and they are generally not serious.

Dawn LaPlant works at LabCorp and said she believes in getting the vaccine at some point, but she doesn’t trust it yet.

“I need more time and something that proves that it lasts longer than just a couple of months,” Ms. LaPlant said. “A lot of us choose not to get the flu vaccine each year. I’ve never had the flu and I’ve worked in health care for 33 years.”

Adriana Brown works for the Maryland state government and came to the rally because she believes people have the freedom to choose what goes into their bodies.

“It’s not a vaccine, it’s an experimental shot,” Ms. Brown said. “Vaccines end something, this does not. Today it’s the health care workers, tomorrow it’ll be the students or my state job. (The vaccine mandate) is coming for you next, don’t think it won’t.”

Many others believe the vaccine simply isn’t effective.

“Most of the people that are getting the delta variant right now are the vaccinated people,” Brittany Edwards of Elkton, Maryland, said. “It’s not stopping people from spreading the virus. The vaccine isn’t protecting anyone but yourself.”

She mentioned “pockets” of vaccinated people who are getting sick, including a group in Barnstable County, Massachusetts following a two-week period of summer events that attracted tourists from all over the country. The CDC said that among the 469 cases of COVID-19 in Massachusetts residents reported following the events, 346 (74%) occurred in persons who were fully vaccinated.

Among persons with breakthrough infection, four (1.2%) were hospitalized, and no deaths were reported. The report lists limitations to the study from Massachusetts such as population-level vaccination coverage increases; vaccinated persons are likely to represent a larger proportion of COVID-19 cases; and asymptomatic breakthrough infections might be underrepresented.

Ms. Edwards said she thinks the adverse effects of the vaccine have been downplayed, but the CDC said those reports are rare. Reports of anaphylaxis occurred in less than .000001% of vaccinated people and 716 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis have been confirmed out of all vaccinated individuals.

These numbers are based off of reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, although they are a passive surveillance system, so underreporting is one of the main limitations of the data.

Ms. Edwards also said she felt that changing the definition of “herd immunity” was suspicious. The World Health Organization defined herd immunity at the beginning of the pandemic as something that could be achieved through the processes of vaccination or antibodies developed after infection, which was later changed to only vaccination. Ms. Edwards believes she had COVID-19 in December 2019, before it was widespread, and thinks the antibodies may have protected her for a full year, before testing positive for COVID-19 in January 2021.

“I was pretty much just a couch potato (when sick in January),” she said. “My joints hurt but that was pretty much it. My husband still has taste issues (from a case of COVID-19). He hasn’t gone to see a doctor or anything but Google has said it’s related to COVID.”

Reports of death after COVID-19 vaccination are also rare. More than 346 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from Dec. 14, 2020, through Aug. 2, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 6,490 reports of death (0.0019%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. FDA requires health care providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause.

Jennifer Toy is a nurse at ChristianaCare who works in Medicare compliance. She doesn’t want to get the vaccine, but when faced with the decision to vaccinate or lose her job, she said she couldn’t afford not to.

“I need to put food on the table for my kids,” she said. “This is not a nice move from ChristianaCare and I’m very disappointed. I wouldn’t be surprised if I got fired for (being there).”

Brooke Summers, of Elkton, Maryland, is six months pregnant and is concerned about the effects that the vaccine could have on her baby. She said she’s also had a hard time getting ChristianaCare to honor her mask-exemption letter.

“I literally had to fight for it,” she said. “I don’t want to get the vaccine, I don’t want to wear the mask. You shouldn’t have to wear something over your face that prohibits your breathing. It should be a personal choice, not a decision that is mandated by the government.”

ChristianaCare is the largest health system and private employer in Delaware and will require all employees to be vaccinated for COVID-19 by Sept. 21. In 2018 they reported having over 12,000 employees and said in late July that approximately 10,000 of their caregivers have been vaccinated.

“We are in a health care shortage in the middle of a pandemic. We can’t really afford to lose any more hospital employees, let alone up to a third of the staff,” Ms. Malin said.

“So we’re really hoping when they see the number of people that are willing to stand out against the mandate, those that are willing to risk termination, or have to change careers … that they see this as a sign that we don’t stand with them, we don’t comply, and we won’t be forced to vaccinate.”