According to Andrew Peterson, restricting hospital services based on vaccine history is unethical. Still, it is being considered in some areas of the United States as the worldwide COVID-19 epidemic continues to overburden institutions and pressure limited healthcare supplies.
“It’s brutal,” Peterson said of possibly using vaccination status to decide which patients to admit to the ICU. “But it’s equally brutal to tell a family of someone who’s had a heart attack that their loved one can’t be admitted because ICUs are full with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients.”
How Should Rationing COVID-19 Vaccination Status Work?
Since the beginning of rationing of care facilities linked with Covid vaccine status is not much favored as it seems unethical and even illegal in some cases, a huge number of people favor this rationing option as it may drive more people to have a vaccine and get the society free from this virus.
In many cases, one more option is sought by experts where those who are not yet vaccinated may have limited excess to medical facilities that are for the critical illnesses only so that even such lives can be saved.
Iowa was the latest jurisdiction to adopt “crisis standards of care,” in which health supplies are strictly controlled, and Alaska and Montana are expected to follow suit soon. With fall flu seasons coming and the delta variety likely to proliferate, more sections of the nation can be in the same predicament. The bulk of admissions in overburdened ICUs has been patients who have not been immunized with COVID-19, although vaccines are cheap, effective, and widely accessible across the nation.
From the beginning of the epidemic, Peterson, an adjunct professor of bioethics at the School of Humanities and Social Science’ Department of Philosophy, has studied the morality of healthcare resources rationing. Mason collaborator Wesley Buckwalter has done polls, lobbied for persons with impairments, and impacted RAND Corps recommendations on triage measures.
“We’ve moved into a new phase of the pandemic the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated and ethical challenges are evolving.”
The healthcare industry is suffering as a result of caregiving for unprotected COVID-19 sufferers, according to Peterson.
“It’s pushing clinical staff beyond the breaking point,” he said. “We’ve already hit the burnout stage. They’re trying to help people who won’t help themselves.” now, my clinical colleagues can only muster the word ‘helplessness.”
Several individuals who do not possess COVID-19 but require critical treatment are denied back from clinics due to healthcare resources limitations. Peterson advised avoiding using immunization history to determine who gets to go first in line.
“Clinicians shouldn’t be in the position of judging patients’ behavior,” he said. “They must care for patients irrespective of how they ended up in the hospital. We wouldn’t turn car accident patients away because they weren’t wearing a seatbelt, so why would that be OK with vaccination status? It’s also hard to tell why people haven’t received their shot. Is it because they can’t access the shot? Or is it because they have anti-vaccine attitudes? Which reasons are good or bad?”
Although vaccine history should not have a factor in determining who receives an ICU room, Peterson believes it must be incorporated into the equation in a certain way. If two patients are equally qualified for ICU admissions, but just one is immunized, Peterson suggests using vaccination records as a “tie-breaker.”
He also recommended that once individuals were released from the clinic, their vaccine history may be utilized to estimate the price of their ICU hospitalization. Non-vaccinated workers’ healthcare rates have increased in several organizations.
He stated, “Financially rewarding people for getting the shot might be an effective way to increase vaccinations and keep people out of the ICU.”
