(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch.
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More than a third of workers at state-run youth home still refuse vaccine
['Clark Kauffman', 'More From Author', '- September']
Date: 2021-09-29 00:00:00
As public officials continue to encourage Iowans to be vaccinated against COVID-19, 41% of the workers at the state-run Boys’ State Training School in Eldora still refuse the vaccine.
The most recently released data from the Iowa Department of Human Services shows that as of Sept. 24, a total of 105 of the 179 state employees at the Eldora school and residential facility for troubled youth have been fully vaccinated.
That’s a modest, but notable, gain from four months ago, when 82 of the facility’s workers had been fully vaccinated.
Six of the home’s 52 youth, and 20 of the home’s 179 workers, have had COVID-19 at some point in the past 90 days, according to state data.
The Eldora home is run by the Iowa Department of Human Services, which operates a total of six residential facilities in Iowa.
Another of the six is the Civil Commitment Unit for Sex Offenders, which employs 139 individuals. About 32% of the unit’s workers have yet to be fully vaccinated.
As of last week, 53 of the facility’s 139 workers, along with 84 of the unit’s 131 patient clients, had been diagnosed with COVID-19 at some point in the past 90 days.
According to DHS, of the 53 employees in the Civil Commitment Unit to have been recently diagnosed with COVID-19, 46 are direct-care workers — which could help explain the high rate of infection among the patient clients in the unit.
Some of the fluctuations in the care-facility vaccine numbers can be explained by staff turnover, with newly hired workers refusing the vaccine that their predecessors had accepted. Also, some workers may have only recently become eligible and weren’t previously offered the vaccine they’re now refusing.
DHS spokesman Matt Highland has said the agency is continuing to work on the issue and that the agency knows “it is critical our team members at our facilities be vaccinated.”
Of the six DHS-run care facilities, the two with the highest vaccine-refusal rates have consistently been the Glenwood Resource Center for the profoundly disabled, and the Boys State Training School.
Glenwood’s vaccine-refusal rate is 38%, down from 44% reported in early May, and the Eldora school’s is 41%, which is a decrease from 45% reported in early May.
Many of those who are refusing the vaccine are health care workers providing direct, hands-on care for individuals, and some are administrators.
For example, of the 225 Glenwood employees who have yet to be fully vaccinated, 170 are considered either direct-care or clinical workers. Seven of the home’s 33 administrative workers have also refused the vaccine.
During the past 90 days, 11 direct-care or clinical workers at Glenwood have had COVID-19, along with two administrators and three of the residents.
The six DHS-run facilities employ a total of 1,806 people, 546 of whom have yet to be fully vaccinated.
Although Gov. Kim Reynolds has strongly encouraged all eligible Iowans to get the vaccine, she has also said she will not be requiring state workers in the state-run care facilities to be vaccinated.
To date, three residents of the six DHS-run facilities have died of COVID-19. State officials are not saying when the individuals died or at which facility they resided.
Here’s a more detailed look at the infection rates and the vaccination-refusal rates in each of the DHS-run facilities as of Sept. 24, when DHS last updated its data:
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