Charlie Baker bats back calls to mandate coronavirus vaccines for cops, corrections officers declining shots

Gov. Charlie Baker batted back calls from Democrats to mandate coronavirus vaccines for police and prison guards as data shows hundreds of state police personnel and thousands of corrections workers have declined jabs offered in-house.

“Let’s get as many people as we possibly can vaccinated, give people a little bit of rope on this whole question associated with hesitancy,” Baker said Wednesday on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio,” adding, “The most important thing that needs to happen here is people need to get vaccinated when they can and when they want to, and let’s see where we are when we get through that process.”

Baker’s hesitancy is at odds with Democrats who have called to mandate vaccines for public-facing workers — particularly cops and corrections officers.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former state Sen. Ben Downing tweeted “no vaccine, no job,” following a Boston Globe report that nearly 900 members of the state police declined vaccines at department-run clinics.

State Attorney General Maura Healey, a potential Corner Office contender, told GBH Monday, “If you’re going to sign up for public work and receive a paycheck from the taxpayers of this state … you can’t get a vaccination? It’s irresponsible.”

But Baker said Wednesday “some people have some very good reasons” for not getting a shot, citing refusals among medical workers.

“I don’t think you should put somebody in a position where they have to choose between a vaccine that they may be very concerned about taking for some very good reasons, and their job, at least not at this point,” Baker said, though he indicated he could be open to the idea later on when there’s more “normalization” of the concept.

The Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union blasted the pols’ “talking points” they called “politically and emotionally motivated” in a statement Wednesday.

“These same folks who so passionately speak about vaccine mandates as a condition of employment were nowhere to be found advocating for you when the infection rate within our ranks was completely unmanageable,” the union’s executive board wrote. “Our officers do their job with the highest level of professionalism. Instead of reaching out to ask the men and women how they have been this past year, they now advocate for mandating a vaccination under the threat of getting fired. It’s gross.”

Massachusetts prioritized vaccines for first responders and correctional facilities early on. More than 2,900 Department of Correction workers have received at least one dose.

But 3,074 declined jabs in-house, according to weekly state data that doesn’t include staffers who got shots elsewhere.

“Advice has been given by some of our officers’ own medical providers to wait 90 days before getting the vaccine after infection,” the correction officers union said, adding, “We fully expect the percentages will rise as more officers are able to obtain the vaccine, but in the end, it is an individual choice for each person.”

Of the 2,847 sworn and civilian state police personnel eligible for vaccination, 2,002 received at least one dose at state-sponsored clinics throughout the winter, state police told the Herald.

State police spokesman David Procopio said just because members “were not vaccinated at the MSP clinics does not mean they refused a vaccine: it only means they did not get a vaccine during the MSP clinics.”

The State Police Association of Massachusetts, which represents troopers, said, “We anecdotally know that many more have received the COVID vaccine through their military service and via hundreds” of other providers.

Union spokeswoman Nancy Sterling said state police “would certainly comply” if the Baker administration made vaccinations mandatory.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3lNVXGA