The Denver Gazette

Hancock: City workers, others must be vaccinated

BY SETH KLAMANN The Denver Gazette

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock announced a sweeping public health order Monday that will require municipal, hospital, school, long-term care, homeless and jail and prison workers to be vaccinated by the end of September.

Every teacher and staff member in Denver at every level of schooling will be required to be vaccinated, Hancock said. That news came as an “absolute surprise” to Denver

Public Schools teachers, the head of the union told The Denver Gazette. Protocols for DPS’s upcoming school year are still being ironed out.

The roughly 10,000 municipal workers also will have to be vaccinated. The order extends beyond people who work directly for the city or for government in general and will cover employees at hospitals and nursing homes.

According to state data, more than 78% of Denver’s long-term care staff have been vaccinated. That’s the second-highest in the state, behind Boulder County.

Previously, there’s been some concern

about long-term care officials that requiring vaccines will hurt staffing levels, which have already been strained. Doug Farmer, the head of the nursing home group Colorado Health Care Association, reiterated that concern Monday.

“While we remain concerned about the potential for a mandate to push health care workers out of the profession, we are glad to see that the mandate covers all types of health care workers … not focused on a single sector,” he said in an email.

The order requires vaccinations by Sept. 30. City attorney Kristin Bronson said Denver officials’ goal is “compliance” and that employers will be expected to keep records and “demonstrate compliance.” The city can impose penalties for not following the order, but the first priority, she said, is to work with them.

Hancock said the city will work with city employees who have questions but that there “might be some folks who may lose their jobs behind this, we recognize that.”

Kelli Christensen, spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Public Safety, said the agency is “encouraging all our Public Safety staff to do their part to protect themselves and our community by making arrangements to get vaccinated as soon as possible.” Her comments referred to Denver’s fire, police and sheriff agencies.

“We have been for a year and a half now, we’ve ordered face coverings to be worn. We’ve had a series of testing regimens. We’ve tried a stay-at-home order. We’ve tried capacity limits. We’ve tried all of those things, and a year and a half later, after all of that, here we are,” said Bob McDonald, the executive director of Denver’s Department of Public Health and Environment. “We have a virus that’s mutated to the point where those things are becoming decreasingly effective after a year and a half.”

The county was among the first in the state to hit a 70% vaccination rate. But Hancock said that “is not enough” and that masking and distancing are “no substitute for what we need to shut the virus down for good.”

Seventy percent was for several months reported to be the threshold for herd immunity. But the delta variant, now dominant in the city and statewide, has changed that position.

McDonald said he wouldn’t predict what rate would be needed to squash the virus more significantly. He said any future orders will be “data driven.”

McDonald noted that deaths have plateaued and posed the question — to himself — about why the city would take this step now, with a relatively high vaccination rate and relatively few deaths and hospitalizations.

“My question would be, ‘Would the preference be that I wait until mortality goes up?’ ’’ he said. “We need to make sure we’re ahead of this so we don’t see another spike in deaths going into the fall.”

“We’re not going to mask our way out of this,” he continued. “We’re not going to test our way out of here.”

It’s been just short of three months since Denver dropped its mask order, as cases declined after the brief fourth wave of April and early May. Cases here steadily plummeted, hospitalizations dropped and vaccinations continued to climb.

But cases have rebounded, and vaccinations have, as McDonald pointed out, “largely stalled.”

As of late last week, the last time the data was updated, Denver averaged 975 new doses each day for the preceding seven days. Though not the lowest, it’s a far cry from the more than 10,000 doses delivered per day in April.

Part of that is doubtless that most Denverites have been inoculated, but Hancock announced last week that he’s setting aside another $500,000 to boost vaccinations, particularly among middle and high school students.

Denver is not alone in seeing its cases climb. Statewide, the number of new COVID-19 cases has increased each day since mid-July. The state positivity rate is higher than it has been in months. Hospitalizations are up slightly, though still well below previous peaks.

Hancock and McDonald stressed there was no mask requirement in the city. That position comes on the heels of federal guidance released last week that certain high-risk counties — including Denver — should require masking indoors. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said everyone in school settings, vaccinated or not, should wear masks.

Denver Public Schools officials said last week that the district’s COVID-19 plans were being finalized and would be announced this week. A spokesman for the district said he was still checking Monday morning if those measures had been finalized.

Denver school board member Tay Anderson tweeted that the city should institute a mask order. He tweeted last week that anyone who didn’t want their children wearing masks next year should enroll them in a remote-learning option.

Rob Gould, the president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said in a statement that the vaccine requirement for school staff came “as an absolute surprise to us.”

“As we have the expectation for the district to collaborate with educators in the decision making process, we have a mutual expectation that governmental officials collaborate with school districts before imposing mandates on their employees and community members,” he said.

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2021-08-03T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-08-03T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://daily.denvergazette.com/article/281513639199236

The Gazette, Colorado Springs