Milwaukee Health Care Systems Mandating COVID-19 Vaccination

With COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations on the rise, all of the major healthcare systems in the Milwaukee area recently announced vaccine requirements for all employees.

Froedtert Health and the Medical College of Wisconsin, Advocate Aurora Health, Ascension and Children’s Wisconsin are all instituting vaccine requirements.

In public statements, Ascension and Advocate Aurora Health specified that they were requiring all staff, including those working from home or not directly involved in patient care, as well as all volunteers and vendors to receive the vaccine.

“Our ultimate duty is to protect the health and safety of our team members, patients and communities,” said Jim Skogsbergh, president and CEO of Advocate Aurora.

The requirement at Advocate, and all the other health systems, is in line with existing requirements that all staff receive an annual influenza vaccine. Each has set a deadline for vaccination sometime between October and November.

These requirements from health care systems arrive as the Delta variant continues to push cases, and now hospitalizations, higher. Recently, the Milwaukee Health Department reported that data on new cases indicated the city was experiencing “Extreme Transmission” of COVID-19.

The Delta variant is highly transmissible, and has been shown to produce approximately 1,200 times more virus in an infected person than the original COVID-19 variant.

“COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization and death,” said Froedtert in a statement. “Vaccination is the best way to protect our staff, patients, families and communities.”

While vaccinated persons can still contract and potentially spread the virus, the odds of this occurring are significantly lower than those that are unvaccinated. And the vaccines are still highly effective at preventing severe illness and death from COVID-19.

Dr. Ben Weston, director of medical services for Milwaukee County, recently said that the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that vaccinated individuals are approximately three times less likely to become infected with COVID-19 than the unvaccinated.

The health systems in Milwaukee instituting a vaccine requirement have the backing of many of the country’s top healthcare associations including the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Association of American Medical Colleges and the National Association for Homecare and Hospice.