COVID-19 infection and vaccination rates in healthcare workers in British Columbia, Canada: A Longitudinal Urban versus Rural Analysis of the Impact of the Vaccine Mandate
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Purpose
Healthcare workers (HCWs) play a critical role in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Early in the pandemic, urban centres were hit hardest globally; rural areas gradually became more impacted. We compared COVID-19 infection and vaccine uptake in HCWs living in urban versus rural locations within, and between, two health authorities in British Columbia (BC), Canada. We also analyzed the impact of a vaccine mandate for HCWs.
Methods
We tracked laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections, positivity rates, and vaccine uptake in 29,021 HCWs in Interior Health (IH) and 24,634 HCWs in Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH), by occupation, age, and home location, comparing to the general population in that region. We then evaluated the impact of infection rates as well as the mandate on vaccination uptake.
Results
By October 27, 2021, the date that unvaccinated HCWs were prohibited from providing healthcare, only 1.6% in VCH yet 6.5% in IH remained unvaccinated. Rural workers in both areas had significantly higher unvaccinated rates compared with urban dwellers. Over 1,800 workers, comprising 6.4% of rural HCWs and 3.3% of urban HCWs, remained unvaccinated and set to be terminated from their employment. While the mandate prompted a significant increase in second doses, the impact on the unvaccinated was less clear.
Conclusions
As rural areas often suffer from under-staffing, loss of HCWs could have serious impacts on healthcare provision as well as on the livelihoods of unvaccinated HCWs. Greater efforts are needed to understand how to better address the drivers of rural-related vaccine hesitancy as the pandemic continues.
Article activity feed
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.13.22269078: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Database: Healthcare worker records were obtained from the provincial Workplace Health Indicator Tracking and Evaluation (WHITE™) database. Database: Healthcaresuggested: NoneResults from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study …SciScore for 10.1101/2022.01.13.22269078: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Database: Healthcare worker records were obtained from the provincial Workplace Health Indicator Tracking and Evaluation (WHITE™) database. Database: Healthcaresuggested: NoneResults from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
-