How Whatcom stands as state vaccination deadline looms
St. Joseph hospital, Bellingham schools and large Whatcom County fire departments are seeing nearly full compliance with a statewide COVID-19 vaccination mandate, officials told The Bellingham Herald.
And no major shortage of doctors, nurses, firefighters, teachers or other school workers was expected in Whatcom County on Monday, Oct. 18, as Gov. Jay Inslee’s vaccine requirement takes effect.
“Staffing levels are where they need to be to care for the patients we serve,” St. Joseph spokeswoman Bev Mayhew told The Bellingham Herald in an Oct. 4 email.
“As is typical in this industry as needs ebb and flow, we employ travel nurses and other clinical and ancillary staff to cover temporary gaps,” Mayhew said.
PeaceHealth, which operates St. Joseph, along with Bellingham Public Schools and the city of Bellingham, are among Whatcom County’s biggest employers.
Another key employer, Western Washington University, required vaccination for all students and staff earlier this year. According to its dashboard Friday, Oct. 15, 95.5% of staff were vaccinated.
Inslee issued an executive order in late August that required state employees — including health-care workers, firefighters and school workers and volunteers — to be fully vaccinated by Monday, Oct. 18.
That means those workers were required to have had the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine or their second dose of the two-shot Pfizer or Moderna vaccines by Oct. 4, because developing full immunity takes about two weeks.
“We don’t want public servants to infect the public,” Inslee said during a visit to Bellingham on Tuesday. “(Vaccination) is the only way out of this.”
Exceptions were allowed for medical reasons and deeply held religious convictions against the vaccines, according to the governor’s order.
PeaceHealth
Some 3,026 of PeaceHealth’s 3,200 in Whatcom County employees — including the hospital medical and clinics — were vaccinated by Oct. 4, Mayhew said, for a vaccination rate of 95%.
About 2,200 of those people work at St. Joseph.
Mayhew said 123 medical and religious exemptions were granted, a number that represents about 4% of all employees.
She said 21 people “across all job classes and across the medical center and clinics resigned or retired, citing the vaccine requirement as the reason. No one has been dismissed.”
Bellingham schools
Some 1,542 of Bellingham Public Schools’ 1,611 employees reported that they were vaccinated as of Oct. 5, spokeswoman Dana Smith told The Herald, for a vaccination rate of 96%.
Smith said 54 employees sought medical or religious exemptions, and 49 exemptions had been granted, she said.
“A medical exemption had to be completed by a health-care or rehabilitation professional; a religious exemption was granted only after individual meetings with each person who requested this exemption,” Smith said.
“Any employee who is not vaccinated or does not have any exemption will not be working after (Monday) per the Governor’s proclamation,” she said.
Smith said any staffing shortages can’t be linked to the vaccine mandate.
“Like most districts in the state and across the nation, we are experiencing continued shortages of positions, particularly bus drivers, food service workers, and substitutes; however, we were observing these shortages before the governor announced the mandate on Aug. 18, and they are not necessarily directly attributable to the mandate,” she said.
Firefighters
About 94% of Bellingham Fire Department employees were vaccinated through Oct. 8, said Bellingham spokeswoman Janice Keller.
Not all the department’s 190 employees were covered by Insee’s order, but those workers are covered by a mandate from Mayor Seth Fleetwood requiring vaccination of all city employees by Dec. 3.
Several fire departments provide firefighting and emergency medical response in small Whatcom County cities and rural areas, and the large departments were reporting full compliance with the governor’s order.
“We worked with our labor group and volunteers and am happy to say we are 100% compliant with the proclamation,” said Chief Larry Hoffman of Fire District 7, which covers Ferndale and surrounding areas.
“We have put even more safety measures in place for our crews and the public that exceeds the mandate due to the contagious nature of the current variant,” Hoffman told The Herald.
In Lynden, Fire Chief Mark Billmire reported a 100% vaccination rate among the department’s 13 full-time firefighters and three part-timers.
Of Lynden’s five volunteer firefighters, three were seeking a religious exemption and two hadn’t provided documentation, he said.
South Whatcom Fire Authority and North Whatcom Fire and Rescue, agencies that cover large rural areas of Whatcom County, had previously reported nearly 100% vaccination rates.
