COVID-19 vaccine mandates for healthcare workers led to increased uptake of the vaccine — especially in younger workers and those in states where there was no option to test out of having to get a vaccine, a new study shows. Results indicate that mandates can promote vaccination among healthcare workers effectively, though they’re no longer required by the federal government.
The report was published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open.
Researchers reviewed data from 31,142 healthcare workers from 45 states. The team also looked at data from 16 states that introduced COVID-19 vaccine mandates for staffers in mid-2021, along with data on who completed their vaccines. (The US Supreme Court mandated it for healthcare workers in early 2022; after that, states without a mandate followed suit.) The average age of the healthcare workers was 45.5 and 72.1% were female.
In states with a mandate, researchers noted a 3.46 percentage point increase in the proportion of healthcare workers who were ever vaccinated against COVID-19 and a 3.64 percentage point increase in those who completed or intended to complete the primary vaccination series two weeks after mandates were announced. Those increases were compared to baseline proportions (one week before mandate announcement) of 87.98% and 86.12%, respectively.
In states without a test-out option, results showed a 2.9 percentage point increase in the number of healthcare workers who got the shot in the first week after mandates went into effect, and a 3.77 percentage point increase in those getting shots within the second and third week after mandates were announced. Compared with the baseline of 87.35%, the figures represented increases of 3.32% and 4.31%, respectively.
In states with a test-out option, there was no statistically significant association between mandates and vaccine uptake.
However, positive associations between mandates and shot uptake were especially effective among workers between 25 and 49 years old.
“Although these mandates have now been lifted following the decline of the COVID-19 pandemic, they serve as valuable examples of the potential effectiveness of immunization efforts for future pandemics,” the authors wrote.
