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Doctors and nurses deserve full access to COVID-19 vaccines [1]

['Shelley Kon', 'Grace Thorvilson', 'Aimee Bernard', 'David Higgins', 'Sasha Zabelski', 'More From Author', 'September', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus']

Date: 2025-09-18

Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shifted away from past COVID-19 vaccine policy, limiting choices for parents, pregnant women, and the vast majority of Americans. Instead of recommending broad availability, the agency restricted access only to people aged 65 and older, or those under 65 with a high risk condition. And just last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. nodded to vaccine restriction in his new MAHA report, which is essentially a list of 128 health priorities he hopes to achieve.

Now, there is another major group that will have limited access to COVID-19 vaccines: health care workers.

The shift in vaccine policy is more than just a technical medical change. RFK Jr. has disrupted the evidence-based, established process for approving and determining who will benefit most from vaccines. Although RFK Jr. pledged he wouldn’t “take away anybody’s vaccines,” the recent actions by the FDA will significantly decrease health care personnel access to COVID-19 vaccines. That carries real risk for patients and providers alike.

I know this because I’ve experienced it firsthand.

As an infectious disease physician in Colorado, I have treated many patients with COVID-19. Patients like Ms. J., who was a young healthy college soccer player who ended up on a ventilator in the critical care unit. Thankfully, she survived with the support and dedication of her critical care team, specialty physicians, nurses, advance practice practitioners, and respiratory therapists.

Health care personnel, or HCP, treated her each day in homemade hair covers, eye shields, respirators and gowns even before the availability of the vaccine. We did it to uphold our duty and calling to heal the sick and save lives, and to improve the health of individuals and communities throughout Colorado and beyond. However, being on the front lines is not without risks. After watching patients and sometimes even staff acquire infections in the hospital, I now specialize in infection prevention, and am on a mission to ensure health care is safe for patients and HCP alike.

The evidence is clear that HCP are known to be at increased risk for exposure to COVID-19. Assisting patients with activities of daily living and working in a hospital — rather than other health care settings — has been shown to be particularly high risk for acquiring COVID-19. In addition, health care workers can serve as a source of transmission of COVID-19. This can lead to outbreaks of hospital-acquired COVID-19 among staff and patients in hospitals.

COVID vaccines have proven safe and effective for preventing symptomatic COVID-19 among HCP. Vaccination of HCP helps reduce staffing shortages and maintains a healthy workforce, ensuring that we do not see a repeat of hospital beds filling up and patients denied care. It is true that many HCP choose not to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, with coverage rates between about 15% to 30%.

However, they had a choice. We should not take immunization choices away from those who would choose protection. If it is not recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, whose members were ousted and replaced with new decision makers, several of whom have made anti-vaccine claims, many health care facilities may not not offer it due to logistical considerations of requiring a prescription, eligibility determination, and cost.

Amidst all these changes, there has been limited explanation to the reasoning behind major decisions such as leaving out HCP when it comes to COVID vaccine recommendations.

Did they deliberately leave HCP off the list? Or was it an oversight due to side-stepping the previously established, rigorous, multistep vaccine approval and recommendation process?

Similar to the move to restrict COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women — despite the overwhelming evidence that the vaccines are safe and effective — there has been very little explanation given to the public for not recommending COVID-19 vaccines for HCP. These inconsistencies in the new recommendations underlie the importance of a transparent and evidence-based vaccine approval process.

It is unclear if the ACIP will amend the list of high risk conditions. If they do, they should remember the nation’s doctors, nurses, caretakers and other critical HCP. Due to the increased risk to HCP and to patients, COVID-19 vaccines should be available to all HCP who would like protection. Their choice — and protection — should not be taken away because of political beliefs without scientific evidence.

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[1] Url: https://coloradonewsline.com/2025/09/18/doctors-nurses-access-covid-vaccines/

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